Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

When one billiard ball strikes and launches another, most observers report seeing the first ball cause the second ball to move. Michotte (1963) argued that the essence of phenomenal causality is "ampliation" of movement, in which the motion of the first object is perceptually transferred to the second object. Michotte provided only phenomenological evidence, however. We extend the reviewing paradigm of Kahneman, Treisman, and Gibbs (1992) to Michotte-style launching events and report response-time data consistent with Michotte's notion of ampliation. We discuss how contemporary theories of feature binding can extend to the domain of interacting objects and address our results. We also suggest that our treatment of ampliation helps clarify controversies regarding whether perceived causality is direct or interpreted and whether it is innate or learned.