Visual perception of lifted weight from kinematic and static (photographic) displays.

Abstract

Observers of patch-light videotape displays can reliably discriminate levels of lifted weight; accuracy of judgments sometimes approximates that achieved when the observers themselves lift weighted boxes. Results of 6 studies reveal impressive levels of visual weight discrimination based on static displays (photographs) of certain action phases sampled from videos of entire lifting-carrying events. Slow and controlled actions (e.g., walking, placing box on table) supported optimum weight discrimination for both photographic and video displays, whereas the action of lifting a box yielded high levels of discrimination only for video displays. Static and kinematic specification of dynamics, as well as the work by painters and photographers to depict humans and other animals in action, is discussed.

Perceptual Weight Judgments When Viewing One's Own and others' Movements under Minimalist Conditions of Visual Presentation

“…This result seems to contradict a strong motor-simulation hypothesis according to which all the kinematic aspects of an observed movement are taken into account in the simulation, whereas a weaker version would propose that there is a motor representation of the goals of the action but its kinematic details need not be encoded. It should be mentioned that such absence of any use of the changes in posture in order to determine the objects' weight does not confirm previous results from Valenti and Costall (1997) whose participants were able to infer objects' weight from static pictures, nor the results of Runeson and Frykholm's study (1981) according to which observers perceive the relative motion of body parts thanks to movement coordination. However, these two studies used heavier objects (which consisted of heavy boxes ranging from 1 kg up to 31 kg depending on the experimental conditions) which might have induced more pronounced changes in posture and thereby better cues to infer the weight of objects.…”

“…Rather, performance seemed to rely on parameters that were not quantified here and that were probably linked to the posture of the person represented in the stick diagram. The hypothesis of the role of posture on the stick-diagram display would be consistent with the fact that people's posture seen on photographs can be used to perform perceptual weight judgments (Valenti and Costall 1997).…”

Observation of Perceived Exertion in Children Using the OMNI Pictorial Scale

“…The basic assumption underlying visual exertional kinematics is that an observer can (a) identify individual movement patterns (i.e., walk, run, jump, dance), (b) detect slight divergence from normal movement that may signal changes in effort, (c) discriminate between nonfatiguing and fatiguing movements, and (d) recognize exertional signs and symptoms (5). Although comparatively limited in number, previous investigations have employed kinematic observation techniques to a) rate exertional perceptions during load-incremented (4) and intermittent (8) exercise test protocols and b) discriminate between and/or classify different weights that are lifted and transported (26).…”

A structural dynamic of form: Displacements in memory for the size of an angle

“…The notion that mental representations preserve such dynamic information has received increasing attention (e.g., Freyd, 1987;Hubbard, 1995b). The majority of empirical investigations of potential dynamic information have focused on physical principles that operate upon an object (e.g., momentum, Finke, 1984, andHubbard, 1995b;weight, Hubbard, 1997, Runeson & Frykholm, 1983, and Valenti & Costall, 1997mass, Gilden &, but both psychologist s (e.g., Attneave, 1968) and art theorists (e.g, Arnheim, 1974Arnheim, , 1988 have speculated that dynamic properties may also arise from more structural properties inherent in the shape of an object. Both Arnheim (1974Arnheim ( , 1988 and Freyd (1992Freyd ( , 1993 have further speculated that such dynamic properties may be involved in aesthetic effects in works of art.…”