Abstract
Point-light walkers have been useful to study the contribution of form
and motion to biological motion perception by manipulating the
lifetime, number, or spatial distribution of the light points. Recent
studies have also manipulated the light points themselves, replacing
them with small images of objects. This manipulation degraded the
recognizability of biological motion, particularly for local images of
human bodies. This result suggests an interference of body form
information in the local images with the body form analysis necessary
for global biological motion recognition at the global level. We
further explored this interference with respect to its selectivity for
body orientation and motion. Participants had to either discriminate
the facing direction (left/right) or the walking direction
(forward/backward) of a global walker composed of local stick figures
that could face left or right and either stand still or walk forward
or backward. Local stick figures interfered stronger with the facing
direction task if they were facing in the same direction as the global
walker. Walking (forward/backward/static) of the stick figures
influenced neither the facing direction task nor the walking direction
task. We conclude that the interference is highly specific since it
concerns not only the category (human form), but even the facing
direction.
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