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Perception of vehicle speed as a function of vehicle size

1993; Springer Science+Business Media; Volume: 31; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3758/bf03337355

2197-9979

Robert J. Herstein, Margaret L. Walker,

Visual perception and processing mechanisms

Previous research suggests that an observer’s ability to detect the motion of an object increases as the size of the object increases. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the opposite is true. In this experiment, 84 subjects watched a videotape of either a motorcycle, a Jeep Cherokee, or a singleaxle dump truck approaching at either 40 km/h or 80 km/h for 4 sec. The subjects were then asked to estimate the time it would take for the vehicle on the tape to hit them if it continued at the same speed. The subjects could accurately discern the difference in speeds, but no effect of vehicle size was found on the subjects’ estimates of the time to collision. Previous researchers used approaching objects with a wide variance in size placed close to the observers. In this experiment, the vehicles were relatively similar in size and were observed from a long distance.