The indispensability of precollision kinematics in the visual perception of relative mass

The visible kinematic pattern that occurs when objects collide contains information about the relative mass of the objects. Recently, Gilden and Proffitt (1989) have claimed that perceivers are limited to the use of simultaneous elemental cues and that therefore mass discrimination judgments are independent of whether the precollision epoch is visible or not. The present paper argues that their experimental results are irrelevant because crucial parameters were held constant, and that false conclusions were drawn because their data were not treated for what they are: threshold measurements obtained with the method of constant stimuli. Three experiments are reported, showing that a high level of performance is attainable only when the whole event is visible, and thus that the effective information is extended over time. In addition, modified PROBIT analysis was used to determine what information observers use when the precollision epoch is occluded. Analytically complex invariants, based on vector components in the abstract collision-axis system, proved to have the best fit to the data. Thus the elementaristic premises in Gilden and Proffitt's cue-heuristic model for relative mass perception are defeated.