How visual cues help us understand bodily motion
Friday, July 8, 2011 - 08:30
in Psychology & Sociology
The human visual system is tuned towards perceiving other people -- who they are, what they are doing, and what they intend to do. This process is called biological motion perception, and humans are so good at it that even a few dots on a screen representing the major joints of a body are enough to retrieve all the information we need—as long as they move. But what role does motion play in that process? Does the visual system use it only to connect the dots to create a coherent, or "global," structure? Researchers investigated this question in a new study.