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It's Surprisingly Hard To Notice When Moving Objects Change
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists at Harvard have found that people are remarkably bad at noticing when moving objects change in brightness, color, size, or shape. In a paper published yesterday (PDF) in Current Biology, the researchers present a new visual illusion that 'causes objects that had once been obviously dynamic to suddenly appear static.' The finding has implications for everything from video game design to the training of pilots."
hi jon, i'm one of the authors of the paper. just thought i'd answer your question about the refresh rate. we used laptop screens that ran at 60 Hz, but the demo works even if you keep the dots motionless and lift up the screen and rock it back and forth. (you can try this yourself if you download the video.) the demo also works on a CRT at 120 Hz. so yes, it the refresh rate was considered and controlled for, and it doesn't seem to matter much. the motion in the youtube and vimeo videos are a bit jerky because they were converted to 30 fps.
hi, stupid scientist #1 here. (i'm one of the authors of the paper.) you're right, it would be nice to have a flash app that lets you change the speed of rotation. sadly, i programmed everything in MATLAB and I don't know flash. (and hey, didn't our overlord already pronounce flash dead?) on that note, if anyone knows flash and wants to program this up into an interactive demo, send me a message, i'm sure we could work something out.
but you're in luck, my friend. the demo works even if you pick up the screen and rock it back and forth, and i have a movie (link below) with no motion. you can loop the video and whirl the computer around all you'd like, at various speeds.
here's the movie.
as an aside, the first experiment in the paper in a speed manipulation. (spoiler alert.) the fast the ring rotates, the slower the dots seem to change.