The facing bias in biological motion perception: structure, kinematics, and body parts

Abstract

Depth-ambiguous point-light walkers (PLWs) elicit a facing bias: Observers perceive a PLW as facing toward them more often than as facing away (Vanrie, Dekeyser, & Verfaillie, Perception, 33, 547-560, 2004 & Psychophysics, 72,1256& Psychophysics, 72, -1260& Psychophysics, 72, , 2010, it remains unclear whether the change in perceived in-depth orientation is caused by a change in perceived gender. In Experiment 1, we show that structural and kinematic stimulus properties that lead to the same changes in perceived gender elicit opposite changes in perceived in-depth orientation, indicating that the relation between perceived gender and in-depth orientation is not causal. The results of Experiments 2 and 3 further suggest that the perceived indepth orientation of PLWs is strongly affected by locally acting stimulus properties. The facing bias seems to be induced by stimulus properties in the lower part of the PLW.

Person (mis)perception: functionally biased sex categorization of bodies

“…We reasoned that to the extent that a sex-categorization bias exists, it may be modulated by the speed of a person's approach such that biases would be more pronounced for judgements of individuals who are approaching rapidly. more pronounced when the target moves in an angry fashion [35] or when a target is approaching the viewer [36]. Thus, the male categorization bias appears to generalize to other perceptions, including body motions, and it appears to be modulated by factors such as emotion state, facing direction and speed of approach that could heighten a perceiver's vigilance.…”

The relationship between social anxiety and the perception of depth-ambiguous biological motion stimuli is mediated by inhibitory ability

“…For example, bottom-up factors such as the kinematics and structure of biological motion stimuli significantly contribute to the facing-theviewer bias (Schouten et al, 2011). In fact, these findings shed doubt on the significance of previous findings that the gender of point-light figures affects the facing-the-viewer bias.…”

“…For instance, observers tend to perceive point-light displays depicting male walkers as facing towards them more often than female stimuli (Brooks et al, 2008; and men are typically viewed as more threatening than women (see Cicone & Ruble, 1978). However, later studies (e.g., Schouten et al, 2011;Weech, McAdam, Kenny, & Troje, 2014) suggest that this gender effect might occur for reasons other than gender, and so further research on the relationship between the figure gender and the facing-the-viewer bias is needed.…”

“…1). Although the available visual information supports both percepts equally, naïve observers perceive these stimuli as facing towards them more often than facing away, a phenomenon that has been termed the facing-the-viewer bias (Brooks et al, 2008;Schouten, Troje, Brooks, Van Der Zwan, & Verfaillie, 2010;Schouten, Troje, & Verfaillie, 2011;Vanrie, Dekeyser, & Verfaillie, 2004;Vanrie & Verfaillie, 2006). Some have argued that the facing-the-viewer bias may exist for sociobiological reasons (Brooks et al, 2008;Vanrie et al, 2004).…”

A Cognitive Analysis of Chinese Idioms Involving Body Parts

“…Therefore, comparative studies across language on idioms about body parts extremely prevail, and most of them focus on metaphorical usages that encompass the rhetorical devices of exaggeration and metaphor [1,2]. In another view, focus is given to neural experiments or speculation on animals in facets of subjects such as mental rotation and motion perception [3,4]. A sophisticated and delicate part as the brain is, the proceedings in this field seem to be rather intricate yet still conducive.…”