Misrepresentation of motion direction causes prediction errors in multiple object tracking

• DOI: 10.1167/11.11.291
• Publication Date: 2011-09-25T00:21:44Z
• Authors: R. St. Clair; A. E. Seiffert
• Keywords: Tracking (education); Position (finance); Texture (cosmology)

Do people use local motion information to predict the future locations of targets during multiple object tracking? Our previous research suggested this may be true because tracking accuracy was lower when texture on conflicted with themselves compared it did not (St. Clair, Huff, & Seiffert, 2010, JOV). However, these findings allowed for possibility that perception position and affected by motion. Here, we investigated whether direction is misrepresented objects conflicting Observers tracked 3 10 dots moved independently linearly in a box filled random-dot texture. The were either grey or at 2 times dot speed same direction, opposite orthogonal each dot's trajectory. At end period, observers used mouse adjust orientation line match randomly-chosen target. mean absolute error (38°) same-moving textures (35°) than opposite-moving (56°; t(12) = 4.58, p < 0.01) orthogonal-moving (59°; 4.60, 0.01). These are consistent our hypothesis misrepresent misrepresentation causes inappropriate predictions target result errors.