Launching the effect: representations of causal movements are influenced by what they lead to

We investigated whether the representation of an observed causal movement is influenced by its observed effect. Subjects watched displays showing collisions between two objects. In this "launching event" (Michotte, 1946/1963), one of the two objects (Object A) started to move and set a second, initially stationary, object (Object B) into motion, which gave a strong impression of apparent causality. The apparent effectiveness of A's movement was manipulated by varying the velocities of A and B. When the velocity of B was higher than that of A, the effectiveness of the collision was high; when it was smaller it was low. Then, subjects were asked to reproduce the velocity of the causal movement. Reproduced velocity followed the velocity of both Object A and Object B, which supports the hypothesis that the effect of a movement is integrated with its apparent cause. However, when apparent causality was reduced by changing the direction of motion of B or by covering the point of collision, the influence of the effect on the representation of the cause persisted, suggesting that retroactive interference may account for the findings. The interference effect could not be reduced to temporal recency or spatial integration and was not obtained in the reverse temporal order (proactive interference). Rather, the two successive movements were blended in memory.