Human movements don’t look the same in a tilted world: Gravitational constraints influence the perception of biological motion.

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasia Pavlidou ◽  
Joachim Lange ◽  
Elisa Raffaella Ferrè
Keyword(s):  
Biological Motion ◽  
Human Movements ◽  
Perception Of Biological Motion

Action Categories and the Perception of Biological Motion

Perception ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Winand H Dittrich
Keyword(s):  
Biological Motion ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Recognition Rate ◽  
Light Spot ◽  
Perceptual Analysis ◽  
Verbal Responses ◽  
Social Actions ◽  
Normal Orientation ◽  
Human Movements ◽  
Perception Of Biological Motion

Johansson filmed walkers and runners in a dark room with lights attached to their main joints and demonstrated that such moving light spots were perceived as human movements. To extend this finding the detection and recognition of Johansson displays of different kinds of movements under three light-spot conditions were studied to determine how human actions are perceived on the basis of biological-motion information. Locomotory, instrumental, and social actions were presented in each condition, namely in normal Johansson (light attached to joints), inter-joint (light attached between joints), and upside-down Johansson. Subjects' verbal responses and recognition times were measured. Locomotory actions were recognised better and faster than social and instrumental actions. Furthermore, biological motions were recognised much better and faster when the light-spot displays were presented in the normal orientation rather than upside down. Recognition rate was only slightly impaired under the inter-joint condition. It is argued that the perceptual analysis of actions and movements starts primarily on an intermediate level of action coding and comprises more than just the similarity of movement patterns or simple structures. Additionally, coding of dynamic phase relations and semantic coding take place at very early stages of the processing of biological motion. Implications of these results for computer vision, perceptual models, and mental representations are discussed.

The Influence of (Biological) Form on the Perception of Biological Motion

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luke Miller ◽  
Burcu A. Urgen ◽  
Maria Florendo ◽  
Jennifer Cook ◽  
Ayse P. Saygin
Keyword(s):  
Biological Motion ◽  
Biological Form ◽  
Perception Of Biological Motion

Perception of biological motion in autism spectrum disorders

2008 ◽  
Vol 46 (5) ◽  
pp. 1480-1494 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine M. Freitag ◽  
Carsten Konrad ◽  
Melanie Häberlen ◽  
Christina Kleser ◽  
Alexander von Gontard ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorders ◽  
Biological Motion ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Spectrum Disorders ◽  
Perception Of Biological Motion

Individual Observer Differences in the Use of Form and Motion to Perceive the Actor’s Sex in Biological Motion Displays

2021 ◽  
pp. 003151252110529
Author(s):  
Eric Hiris ◽  
Sean Conway ◽  
William McLoughlin ◽  
Gaokhia Yang
Keyword(s):  
Biological Motion ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Autism Spectrum Quotient ◽  
Group Level ◽  
Motion Cues ◽  
Motion Imagery ◽  
Adult Participants ◽  
Participant Characteristics ◽  
Perception Of Biological Motion ◽  
Form Information

Recent research has shown that the perception of biological motion may be influenced by aspects of the observer’s personality. In this study, we sought to determine how participant characteristics (including demographics, response inhibition, autism spectrum quotient, empathy, social anxiety, and motion imagery) might influence the use of form and motion to identify the actor’s sex in biological motion displays. We varied the degree of form and motion in biological motion displays and correlated 76 young adult participants’ performances for identifying the actor’s sex in these varied conditions with their individual differences on variables of interest. Differences in the separate use of form and motion cues were predictive of participant performance generally, with use of form most predictive of performance. Female participants relied primarily on form information, while male participants relied primarily on motion information. Participants less able to visualize movement tended to be better at using form information in the biological motion task. Overall, our findings suggest that similar group level performances across participants in identifying the sex of the actor in a biological motion task may result from quite different individual processing.

scholarly journals Serial dependence in perception of biological motion

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (12) ◽  
pp. 274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wesley Chaney ◽  
Alina Liberman ◽  
David Whitney
Keyword(s):  
Biological Motion ◽  
Serial Dependence ◽  
Perception Of Biological Motion

scholarly journals Neural and Neuromimetic Perception: A Comparative Study of Gender Classification from Human Gait

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 10402-1-10402-11
Author(s):  
Viswadeep Sarangi ◽  
Adar Pelah ◽  
William Edward Hahn ◽  
Elan Barenholtz
Keyword(s):  
Biological Motion ◽  
Human Perception ◽  
Movement Analysis ◽  
Inversion Effect ◽  
Human Gait ◽  
Computational Performance ◽  
Potential Applications ◽  
Perceptual Characteristics ◽  
Point Light ◽  
Perception Of Biological Motion

Abstract Humans are adept at perceiving biological motion for purposes such as the discrimination of gender. Observers classify the gender of a walker at significantly above chance levels from a point-light distribution of joint trajectories. However, performance drops to chance level or below for vertically inverted stimuli, a phenomenon known as the inversion effect. This lack of robustness may reflect either a generic learning mechanism that has been exposed to insufficient instances of inverted stimuli or the activation of specialized mechanisms that are pre-tuned to upright stimuli. To address this issue, the authors compare the psychophysical performance of humans with the computational performance of neuromimetic machine-learning models in the classification of gender from gait by using the same biological motion stimulus set. Experimental results demonstrate significant similarities, which include those in the predominance of kinematic motion cues over structural cues in classification accuracy. Second, learning is expressed in the presence of the inversion effect in the models as in humans, suggesting that humans may use generic learning systems in the perception of biological motion in this task. Finally, modifications are applied to the model based on human perception, which mitigates the inversion effect and improves performance accuracy. The study proposes a paradigm for the investigation of human gender perception from gait and makes use of perceptual characteristics to develop a robust artificial gait classifier for potential applications such as clinical movement analysis.

Biological Motion Shown Backwards: The Apparent-Facing Effect

Perception ◽  
10.1068/p3262 ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 435-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Pavlova ◽  
Ingeborg Krägeloh-Mann ◽  
Niels Birbaumer ◽  
Alexander Sokolov
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Biological Motion ◽  
Presentation Mode ◽  
Reverse Transformation ◽  
Perceptual Identification ◽  
Perceptual Development ◽  
Apparent Direction ◽  
Point Light ◽  
Perception Of Biological Motion ◽  
Order Of Presentation

We examined how showing a film backwards (reverse transformation) affects the visual perception of biological motion. Adults and 6-year-old children saw first a point-light quadruped moving normally as if on a treadmill, and then saw the same display in reverse transformation. For other groups the order of presentation was the opposite. Irrespective of the presentation mode (normal or reverse) and of the facing of the point-light figure (rightward or leftward), a pronounced apparent-facing effect was observed: the perceptual identification of a display was mainly determined by the apparent direction of locomotion. The findings suggest that in interpreting impoverished point-light biological-motion stimuli the visual system may neglect distortions caused by showing a film backwards. This property appears to be robust across perceptual development. Possible explanations of the apparent-facing effect are discussed.

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