Attention To The Impact Of The Momentum

Freyd and Finke(1984) found that individual’s memory of a moving object’s last place would switch forward by its trajectory, and they named this phenomenon Representational Momentum. Later on, researchers found pitch and luminance had this character too. They expand the meaning of representational momentum and defined it as: the memory of the last status of an object always switch positive by its motion trail.The visial signal needs some time to transmit from retina to visual cortex, but by the same time, visual stimulation would move forward along its old track. That means the stimulation has stayed at some other place the time we respond to its signal.Our brain has form a mechanism to solve this problem-Representational Momentum.This mechanism is very important for us to locate a moving object precisely in our daily life. And more important when hunting, so we evolve this mechanism in a long-drawn evolution.Predecessor has conducted a lot of experiments to study the influence factor of representational momentum and found the characteristic of object, the way we show the object, the surrounding of object and characteristics of observers would all have impact of representational momentum. And some factor made RM bigger, some made it smaller. But in all these factors, one factor’s impaction pattern still has no final conclusion---attention. Some research found it made RM bigger, but some made the opposite conclusion. This article will take a deeper explore based on predecessors’ research.Experiment 1 use a disturb stimulus paradigm, made a contrast between disturb stimulus condition and non-disturb stimulus condition, and found that when there is a disturb stimulus, RM became bigger.Experiment 2 use dual-task paradigm, made a contrast between single-task condition and dual-task condition. And found RM was bigger in a dual-task condition.As experiment 1 and 2 all asked observers to complete two experiments continuously, the change of RM may be caused by tiredness. So experiment 3 asked observer to complete experiment 1.2 twice, and found there was no different between this two outcomes. So we can exclude the possibility that the change of RM is caused by tiredness.Combine all these experimental results, we can come to conclusion that:1. In the disturb stimulus condition, as disturb stimulus joined, observers’ attention declined, and made RM bigger, so attention inhibit RM.2. In the dual-task condition, as the second task joined, observers’ attention declined, and made RM bigger, so attention inhibit RM.3. Although dual-ask condition would occupy more attention than disturb stimulus condition, but RM has not get bigger, so RM will not enlarge continuously as attention decline.4. Fatigue effect has not appear in this research, so all the change of RM is caused by attention decline.