Biological motion cues trigger reflexive attentional orienting

Shi, Jinfu; Weng, Xuchu; He, Sheng; Jiang, Yi

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2010.09.001

Cited by 81 publications

(104 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…Using point-light displays of moving walkers, it has been shown that both human and nonhuman (e.g., a cat) biological motion can cue attention in a congruent direction, even when this is a counterpredictive cue to subsequent targets. Moreover, this effect disappears both with inverted motion orientation and nonbiological motion stimuli (Shi, Weng, He, & Jiang, 2010). These results indicate that reflexive attention may be specialized for biological motion direction.…”

Section: Covert Attention To Action Action In Covert Cueing Paradigmsmentioning

confidence: 56%

Visual attention and action: How cueing, direct mapping, and social interactions drive orienting

2017

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Despite considerable interest in both action perception and social attention over the last 2 decades, there has been surprisingly little investigation concerning how the manual actions of other humans orient visual attention. The present review draws together studies that have measured the orienting of attention, following observation of another's goal-directed action. Our review proposes that, in line with the literature on eye gaze, action is a particularly strong orienting cue for the visual system. However, we additionally suggest that action may orient visual attention using mechanisms, which gaze direction does not (i.e., neural direct mapping and corepresentation). Finally, we review the implications of these gaze-independent mechanisms for the study of attention to action. We suggest that our understanding of attention to action may benefit from being studied in the context of joint action paradigms, where the role of higher level action goals and social factors can be investigated.

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Section: Covert Attention To Action Action In Covert Cueing Paradigmsmentioning

confidence: 56%

Visual attention and action: How cueing, direct mapping, and social interactions drive orienting

2017

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“…Different from inanimate object motions, humans have evolved to be highly sensitive to other biological entities' movements, quickly understanding the intentions behind their movements and anticipating their next move (12)(13)(14), even when the motions are portrayed by only a handful of point lights attached to the head and major joints (15). The evolutionary importance of biological motion processing makes it special and distinguishes it from other forms of motion (16).…”

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confidence: 99%

Life motion signals lengthen perceived temporal duration

Wang

Jiang

2012

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Point-light biological motions, conveying various different attributes of biological entities, have particular spatiotemporal properties that enable them to be processed with remarkable efficiency in the human visual system. Here we demonstrate that such signals automatically lengthen their perceived temporal duration independent of global configuration and without observers' subjective awareness of their biological nature. By using a duration discrimination paradigm, we showed that an upright biological motion sequence was perceived significantly longer than an inverted but otherwise identical sequence of the same duration. Furthermore, this temporal dilation effect could be extended to spatially scrambled biological motion signals, whose global configurations were completely disrupted, regardless of whether observers were aware of the nature of the stimuli. However, such an effect completely disappeared when critical biological characteristics were removed. Taken together, our findings suggest a special mechanism of time perception tuned to life motion signals and shed new light on the temporal encoding of biological motion.point-light walker | temporal expansion | psychometric function O ur senses not only enable our brain to perceive images and sounds, but they also inform us about the passage of time. Time perception over fine scales is fundamental to a range of everyday human activities (for example, to estimate how fast you need to run to catch a ball), and we seem to be able to accurately estimate time as if there exists a specific mechanism that can measure time (e.g., an internal clock; refs. 1, 2). Although it seems quite natural, perceiving time is an extremely complex phenomenon that involves a number of unresolved issues in psychology, and we are far from completely understanding its underlying mechanisms. It has been shown that there is not a specific sensory organ designed to tell time and our representations of subjective temporal duration vary in response to variations of external sensory inputs (reviewed in ref.3).Stimulus motion is thought of as a crucial property that can modulate and alter our perception of time. Several studies have shown that a moving stimulus is perceived to last longer in duration than a slower or stationary stimulus of the same physical duration, a phenomenon referred to as subjective time dilation (4-9). Some researchers proposed that this subjective time dilation effect might reflect a result of long-term evolutionary adaptation (6, 10). By lengthening the subjective duration of those moving and important stimuli and thus enhancing their temporal resolution, observers may be able to process such signals in greater depth per unit of objective time (11), which potentially provides an ecological advantage allowing living organisms to anticipate events or actions and to better adapt themselves to the environment (6). Although the underlying mechanism of the time distortion induced by motion has often been speculated from a point of evolutionary view, all these studies us...

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“…Indeed, it has been demonstrated that the walking direction of point-light walkers can be incidentally processed [37] and even induce reflexive attentional orienting [21], suggesting an intrinsic sensitivity of the human visual attention system to biological motion signals [17,38,39]. Because a fast moving biological entity is more likely to signal a threat, it is thus crucial for an organisms survival to quickly and precisely judge its moving direction in order to make an appropriate response (e.g., fight-or-flight reaction).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous studies have shown that the human visual system has specialized mechanisms tuned to different face viewpoints [18,19] and body orientations [20]. Although motion can provide more reliable and compelling direction information than a static frame [21], the role of the motion signals is still unclear, as well as whether local motion itself can influence viewpoint discrimination in biological motion. While many previous studies have focused on the global aspects of biological motion perception and have emphasized the contribution of the global configuration [13,22,23], some recent findings also provide evidence highlighting the unique role of local motion signals (e.g., the motion of the feet) in biological motion processing.…”

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Motion speed modulates walking direction discrimination: The role of the feet in biological motion perception

et al. 2011

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The human visual system is tuned to the motions of biological entities, which provide potentially vital information for survival. The current study examines the interplay between motion speed and motion direction perception. Following a brief presentation of a point-light walker walking straight ahead or slightly leftward or rightward, observers were asked to quickly judge the walking direction (left or right). Participants showed better direction discrimination when the walker walked at a fast pace compared to a natural or slow pace, and this was not simply due to a difference in motion cycles. Moreover, walking direction sensitivity could be enhanced by increasing the feet motion speed alone, so long as the direction of feet movement was consistent with that of the other body parts. These findings demonstrate that our perception of walking direction is influenced by local motion speed, and highlight the role of the feet in biological motion perception. biological motion, motion speed, walking direction, discrimination Citation:Cai P, Yang X Y, Chen L, et al. Motion speed modulates walking direction discrimination: The role of the feet in biological motion perception.

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Biological motion cues trigger reflexive attentional orienting

Cited by 81 publications

References 56 publications

Visual attention and action: How cueing, direct mapping, and social interactions drive orienting

Visual attention and action: How cueing, direct mapping, and social interactions drive orienting

Life motion signals lengthen perceived temporal duration

Motion speed modulates walking direction discrimination: The role of the feet in biological motion perception

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