In movie fight scenes, punches often miss by a foot or more, but when sound effects are added, and the punchee adds an effective-looking recoil, we’re convinced that the punch is "real." We’ve posted on this phenomenon before: when a "click" sound is played as two animated balls pass by each other, it’s perceived as a "bounce."This type of sound effect, where the sound occurs at a critical moment in an animation or movie, has been explored quite extensively. But is it possible that other types of sound might affect how we see motion? Adam Ecker and Laurie Heller realized that they could apply sound to the research stimuli of Daniel Kersten. In Kersten’s research, a ball moves around a virtual 3-D box, and the appearance of a shadow causes viewers to view the identical ball movement in different ways. What if sound is added to the moving ball? I’ve modified a couple of Kersten’s demos, adding sound to suggest different types of movement.

info at ^scienceblogs

[sound chain]