Causation, causal perception, and conservation laws

Abstract

We investigated the perception of causation via the ability to detect conservation violations in simple events. We showed that observers were sensitive to energy conservation violations in free-fall events. Furthermore, observers were sensitive to gradually perturbed energy dynamics in such events. However, they were more sensitive to the effect of decreasing gravity than to that of increasing gravity. Displays with decreasing gravity were the only displays in which the energy profile was dominated by (apparent) potential energy, leading to an asymmetric trajectory.