ArticlePloS one2025
Failure to replicate the Aubert-Fleischl effect.
Article in PloS one, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
For many years the accepted wisdom in vision science has been that humans tend to underestimate the speed of an object when they pursue it with their gaze in comparison to when they fixate a spot in the visual scene and the object moves across the retina, an effect that is referred to as the Aubert-Fleischl phenomenon. However, experiments on the Aubert-Fleischl effect have generally employed a target moving in front of a blank background. For objects moving in the real world, relative motion between the object and the background provides additional cues, potentially allowing the visual system to compensate for the Aubert-Fleischl phenomenon. To test this hypothesis, we asked 50 participants to compare the speed of a single sphere to the speed of a sphere-cloud in a two-interval forced-choice task while they either followed the single sphere with their gaze or kept their eyes on a fixation cross. Stimuli were presented in virtual reality and the sphere's movement could occur either in a completely black environment with no relative motion cues present, or against a visible, textured background behind the moving sphere. The probe sphere-cloud always moved in front of the same background as the target. We found no evidence for an Aubert-Fleischl effect, i.e., no evidence for an underestimation of speed during pursuit relative to fixation, in either of the environments. Our results challenge the prevailing notion that object speed is underestimated when the object is pursued versus when fixation is maintained and highlights the necessity to take into account characteristics of the visual scene when it comes to the Aubert-Fleischl effect.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.