Although this line of research began in an effort to answer a practical musical question, its surprising findings suggests several implications for existing theories of sensory integration. To continue exploring this illusion, we have created a series of point-light abstractions of the original gestures. These abstractions hold many advantages, and can be manipulated to move in a variety of ways. As the abstractions capture salient properties of the original illusion (Schutz & Kubovy, 2009), they are useful in facilitating further research.
By deconstructing different aspects of these gestures, we have learned that it is the time of the post-impact motion that governs the illusion – rather than the pre-impact motion or the time, distance covered, velocity, or acceleration of the post-impact motion (Armontrout, Schutz, & Kubovy, 2009). Because the flexible nature of the animations means they offer endless possiblities for future research, we plan to continue using and expanding this software in the future to serve as a research tool for others interested in further study of sensory integration and/or the synthesis of smooth motion animations through the simply specification of x and y coordinate values for joints (without the need for programming in MATLAB or other languages).