[Examination of eye-movement related factors of representational momentum]

The judged final position of a moving target that disappears is displaced forward (representational momentum: RM), a phenomenon called representational momentum (RM). Recently, Kerzel (2000) suggested that RM was elicited by SPEMs after a target's offset that moved the persisting image of the target in the direction of the motion after the target dissapeared. We examined RM for a target that was not pursued by eyes. In Experiment 1 the target and a small dot moved in the same or opposite direction. Participants were instructed to pursue the small dot and locate the final position of the target. In both conditions the target's motion on the retina was expected to be equal to each other. Although the Kerzel's hypothesis (2000) predicted negative RM for the target moving in the opposite direction of SPEMs, no consistent negative RM was observed. Results of Experiment 2 suggested that the individual strategy to use the small dot affected RM. Taken together, it was shown that Kerzel's lower-level model was not very successful in explaining RM, but instead data suggested that predictive mental extrapolation and a higher-order individual strategy were involved in the production of RM.