Conceptual effects on representational momentum.

Four experiments addressed the question of whether prior knowledge of an object's typical movement in the real world affects the representation of motion. Representational momentum (RM) is the tendency for the short-term memory representation of an object to undergo a transformation corresponding to the object's trajectory. Using the standard RM paradigm, the RM elicited by objects with different typical motions was compared. Results indicate that conceptual knowledge about an object's typical motion affects the magnitude of RM and, as such, the representation of motion.