Revealing individual differences in strategy selection through visual motion extrapolation

Humans are constantly challenged to make use of internal models to fill in missing sensory information. We measured human performance in a simple motion extrapolation task where no feedback was provided in order to elucidate the models of object motion incorporated into observers’ extrapolation strategies. There was no “right” model for extrapolation in this task. Observers consistently adopted one of two models, linear or quadratic, but different observers chose different models. We further demonstrate that differences in motion sensitivity impact the choice of internal models for many observers. These results demonstrate that internal models and individual differences in those models can be elicited by unconstrained, predictive-based psychophysical tasks.