Broken escalator phenomenon
sensation of losing balance or dizziness when stepping onto an escalator which is not working
The broken escalator phenomenon is the sensation of losing balance, confusion or dizziness reported by some people when stepping onto an escalator which is not working. It is said that there is a brief, odd sensation of imbalance, despite full awareness that the escalator is not going to move.
It has been shown that this effect causes people to step inappropriately fast onto a moving platform that is no longer moving, even when this is obvious to the participant.
Even though subjects are fully aware that the platform or escalator is not moving now, parts of their brains still act on previous experience gained when it was moving, and so misjudge how to step onto it. Thus, this effect demonstrates the separateness of the declarative and procedural functions of the brain.
The broken escalator phenomenon is the result of a locomotor after-effect which replicates the posture adopted when walking onto a moving platform to stabilise oneself. This after-effect was studied by Adolfo Bronstein and Raymond Reynolds in an experiment published in 2003, then explored further through a series of additional experiments by Bronstein and associates.
The phenomenon was originally discussed by Brian Simpson (1992) who named it the "escalator effect" and regarded it as the perceptual consequence of a failed expectation. He thought it had something in common with the Duncker Effect. He also considered the related sensation experienced on alighting from a stationary escalator.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 29, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q16847152. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2003 and 1992.
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This entry incorporates text from “Broken escalator phenomenon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.