The role of cognitive factors and personality traits in the perception of illusory self-motion (vection)

Sarah D’Amour,Laurence R Harris,Stefan Berti,Behrang Keshavarz

doi:10.3758/s13414-020-02228-3

Abstract

Vection is a perceptual phenomenon that describes the visually induced subjective sensation of self-motion in the absence of physical motion. Previous research has discussed the potential involvement of top-down cognitive mechanisms on vection. Here, we quantified how cognitive manipulations such as contextual information (i.e., expectation) and plausibility (i.e., chair configuration) alter vection. We also explored how individual traits such as field dependence, depersonalization, anxiety, and social desirability might be related to vection. Fifty-one healthy adults were exposed to an optic flow stimulus that consisted of horizontally moving black-and-white bars presented on three adjacent monitors to generate circular vection. Participants were divided into three groups and given experimental instructions designed to induce either strong, weak, or no expectation with regard to the intensity of vection. In addition, the configuration of the chair (rotatable or fixed) was modified during the experiment. Vection onset time, duration, and intensity were recorded. Results showed that expectation altered vection intensity, but only when the chair was in the rotatable configuration. Positive correlations for vection measures with field dependence and depersonalization, but no sex-related effects were found. Our results show that vection can be altered by cognitive factors and that individual traits can affect the perception of vection, suggesting that vection is not a purely perceptual phenomenon, but can also be affected by top-down mechanisms.

Highlights

Vection is a perceptual phenomenon that describes the visually induced subjective sensation of self-motion in the absence of physical motion
With respect to personality traits, we investigated four concepts that seem relevant in the context of vection: field dependence, depersonalization, anxiety, and social desirability
Results showed a main effect of speed, F(2, 96) = 16.52, p < .001, ηp2 = .256, indicating that the number of non-vection trials increased as the stimulus speed decreased

Summary

Introduction

Vection is a perceptual phenomenon that describes the visually induced subjective sensation of self-motion in the absence of physical motion. Contextual information was altered by manipulating the experimental instructions and settings: One group of participants sat on a rotatable chair and was told that the purpose of the study was to investigate self-motion. We hypothesized that the manipulation of contextual information and plausibility would affect vection ratings; we expected shorter vection latencies, longer vection durations, and increased vection intensity for the high expectation group compared with the low expectation group. We expected that this effect would be prevalent in the visual conditions that generated moderate vection (slow or medium speed), as stronger visual cues may dominate or override the subtle cognitive manipulations we chose. Based on previous studies (Riecke et al, 2009), we anticipated that sitting on a chair that was known to be rotatable would increase vection compared with sitting on a fixed chair

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