Abstract

This study investigated the impact of surrounding object motion on the estimation time of prediction motion task. In Experiment 1, we explored the effect of relative speed differences between target and distractor stimuli on prediction motion estimation time. Additionally, we conducted a pre-training session before the main task to examine whether the context effect was cognitive. Context effects were observed in the motion estimation task, and they persisted even after repeated training. In Experiment 2, we investigated whether the context effect was influenced by the distance between moving objects by adding the speed of distractor stimuli to the target stimulus speed. As the distance between moving objects increased, the magnitude of the context effect also increased. In Experiment 3, we manipulated the speed information and position information provided by the surrounding context independently by adding multiple distractor stimuli. Estimation time varied depending on the type of clues available during the observation of motion. This study confirmed that the motion of other objects affects the estimation time of a hidden object’s motion. The results suggest that the global spatial arrangement of objects plays an important role in motion estimation.