Seeing Heaviness

Participants watched a recording of the motions produced when another person wielded a pendulum. The participants’ task was to judge the heaviness of the pendulum. We found that participants were similarly adept at judging the pendulum’s heaviness as when participants wield the pendulum themselves and perceive heaviness haptically. It is hypothesized that people are able to make these visual heaviness judgments accurately because the kinematics of the wielding patterns are specifying the underlying dynamics of wielding the pendulum. This kinematic specification of dynamics allows visual perceivers to access the pendulum’s rotational inertia, which is the same object property that has been shown to influence haptically perceived object heaviness.