Contributions of invariants, heuristics, and exemplars to the visual perception of relative mass

Some potential contributions of invariants, heuristics, and exemplars to the perception of dynamic properties in the colliding balls task were explored. On each trial, an observer is asked to determine the heavier of 2 colliding balls. The invariant approach assumes that people can learn to detect complex visual patterns that reliably specify which ball is heavier. The heuristic approach assumes that observers only have access to simple motion cues. The exemplar-based approach assumes that people store particular exemplars of collisions in memory, which are later retrieved to perform the task. Mathematical models of these theories are contrasted in 2 experiments. Observers may use more than 1 strategy to determine relative mass. Although observers can learn to detect and use invariants, they may rely on either heuristics before the invariant has been learned or exemplars when memory demands and similarity relations allow.