Author:

Keywords:

michotte's life and work, causality, amodal completion, contemporary psychology, cognitive neuroscience, partly occluded objects, phenomenal causality, visual occlusion, perceived causality, physical causality, local completions, illusory figures, collision events, coding theory, Social Sciences, Psychology, Experimental, Psychology, Michotte's life and work, PARTLY OCCLUDED OBJECTS, AMODAL COMPLETION, VISUAL-PERCEPTION, CAUSAL IMPRESSIONS, LOCAL COMPLETIONS, CODING THEORY, OCCLUSION, INFORMATION, DYNAMICS, REPRESENTATION, Belgium, Cognition, Cognitive Science, History, 20th Century, Humans, Neurosciences, Perception, 1701 Psychology, 1702 Cognitive Sciences, Experimental Psychology, 5201 Applied and developmental psychology, 5202 Biological psychology, 5204 Cognitive and computational psychology

Abstract:

Several decades after Michotte's work was published, it continues to inspire current research in perception, cognition, and beyond. In this special issue we pay tribute to this heritage with a collection of empirical and theoretical papers on amodal completion and the perception of causality, two areas of research within which Michotte's work and ideas have had a lasting influence. As a background to better understand the remaining papers, we briefly sketch Michotte's life and work and the scope (in breadth and in depth) of his impact. We then review Michotte's seminal contributions to the areas covered in this special issue, some of the major research discoveries and themes in the intervening decades, and the major open questions and challenges we are still facing. We also include a sneak preview of the papers in this special issue, noting how they relate to Michotte's work and to each other. This review shows both how much influence Michotte has had on contemporary perception and cognition research, and how much important work remains to be done. We hope that the papers in this special issue will serve both to celebrate Michotte's heritage in this respect, and to inspire other investigators to continue the projects he began. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.