Tricking people into feeling like they are moving when they are not paying attention

Vection refers to illusion of self motion in stationary obervers usually by means of moving visual stimuli [Fischer and Kornmüller 1930]. Linear vection naturally occurs when seated in a train and observing another train on an adjacent track start moving. The very compelling but brief illusion happens as observers are not paying particular attention to the environment but are rather "defocused" from the scene. We studied the effect of two visual attention tasks on the perception of linear vection. The results show a significant decrease in vection onset time with an attention task