Illusory causal crescents: misperceived spatial relations due to perceived causality

When an object A moves toward an object B until they are adjacent, at which point A stops and B starts moving, we often see a collision--ie we see A as the cause of B's motion. The spatiotemporal parameters which mediate the perception of causality have been explored in many studies, but this work is seldom related to other aspects of perception. Here we report a novel illusion, wherein the perception of causality affects the perceived spatial relations among two objects involved in a collision event: observers systematically underestimate the amount of overlap between two items in an event which is seen as a causal collision. This occurs even when the causal nature of the event is induced by a surrounding context, such that estimates of the amount of overlap in the very same event are much improved when the event is displayed in isolation, without a 'causal' interpretation. This illusion implies that the perception of causality does not proceed completely independently of other visual processes, but can affect the perception of other spatial properties.