REPRESENTATIONAL MOMENTUM FOR A SPIRAL PATH

When a ball is shot through a spiral tube at high speed, the ball emer ges in a straight path tangent to the ball's point of departure from t he tube. However, past research has shown that many Ss believe the bal l follows a curved pathway. In the 3 experiments described in this art icle, a ball traveling through a spiral tube was animated on a compute r graphics screen. Ss' memory distortions for positions of the ball al ong each of 3 pathways were measured using a representational momentum paradigm. Retention interval was varied across the 3 experiments. The results from the 3 experiments reported here replicate retention inte rval results previously reported for representational momentum effects , and they suggest that the representational pathway of a ball exiting a spiral tube is spiral in shape. These findings may shed some light on why people have demonstrated naivete on the spiral tube problem in past research.