Graduation Term

Summer 2026

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Department of Psychology

Committee Chair

Jeffrey B. Wagman

Committee Member

Dawn M. McBride

Committee Member

Brandon Thomas

Abstract

The ecological approach to perceiving and acting hypothesizes that perceiving object properties requires selective detection of invariants – patterns in ambient energy arrays that persist across transformations. Whereas perceiving some properties of wielded objects, such as length and heaviness, requires detecting the moments of inertia, perceiving other properties, such as grasp position, requires detecting the products of inertia. Previous research has shown that when participants perceived the length of wielded occluded objects, they incidentally remembered the heaviness of those objects (Thomas & Riley, 2015). The researchers proposed this occurred because perceiving either property requires detecting the moments of inertia. The present study extended these findings by investigating whether participants perceived grasp position on a given object would incidentally remember the heaviness of that object. Participants wielded one set of occluded objects and reported perceived grasp position. Then after a brief distractor task, they performed a surprise remembering task in which they were asked to report both remembered grasp position and remembered heaviness. Participants then performed the same tasks for a different set of objects. I hypothesized that participants would not be able to differentiate remembered heaviness for the first set of objects (because perceiving grasp position and heaviness respectively require detecting the products and moments of inertia) but would be able to do so for the second set of objects (because they would know to attend to both). The results were consistent with the hypothesis, indicating that remembering of wielded object properties requires selectively detecting relevant mechanical invariants.

Access Type

Thesis-Open Access

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