Representational Momentum Transcends Motion

To navigate the world, our minds must represent not only how things are now (perception), but how they are about to be (prediction). However, perception and prediction blur together for objects in motion, a classic finding known as "representational momentum". If you glance at a photo of a person diving into a lake, you will tend to remember them closer to the water than they really were. In seven experiments, we show that this phenomenon transcends motion: Our minds make predictions that distort our memories about changes that involve no motion whatsoever, including changes in brightness, color saturation, and proportion. Additionally, we use representational momentum to map the limits of automatic prediction, showing that there are no analogous effects for changes in hue. Our automatic predictions distort our memories in many domains—not just motion—and the presence or absence of these distortions expose the inner workings of perception, cognition, and memory.