A recent study published in the Journal of Vision reveals that humans are better at estimating the motion of objects moving downwards compared to upwards, regardless of the direction relative to gravity. This new research suggests that our perception of downward-moving objects is enhanced by the congruence of their motion with the direction toward our legs rather than the influence of gravity detected through our inner ear. “Previous studies have shown that the people can catch a descending object more accurately than an ascending object. When people heard this asymmetric performance for catching ascending and descending objects, they generally thought that this asymmetric aligned with the gravity axis because we are used to seeing the moving object toward the gravity in daily life,” said study author Takashi Hirata, a member of the Geometrical Understanding of Spatial Orientation research project at the Japan Science and Technology Agency. “Our team considered another possibility: the asymmetric performance for catching might depend on the observer’s body axis, as we spend most of our time in an upright posture where …