When Does One Decide How Heavy an Object Feels While Picking It Up?

Abstract

When lifting an object, it takes time to decide how heavy it is. How does this weight judgment develop? To answer this question, we examined when visual size information has to be present to induce a size-weight illusion. We found that a short glimpse (200 ms) of size information is sufficient to induce a size-weight illusion. The illusion occurred not only when the glimpse was before the onset of lifting but also when the object’s weight could already be felt. Only glimpses more than 300 ms after the onset of lifting did not influence the judged weight. This suggests that it takes about 300 ms to reach a perceptual decision about the weight.