title: Orientation specificity in biological motion perception.
abstract: We addressed the issue of how display orientation affects the perception of biological motion. In Experiment 1, spontaneous recognition of a point-light walker improved abruptly with image-plane display rotation from inverted to upright orientation. Within a range of orientations from 180 degrees to 90 degrees, it was dramatically impeded. Using ROC analysis, we showed (Experiments 2 and 3) that despite prior familiarization with a point-light figure at all orientations, its detectability within a mask decreased with a change in orientation from upright to a range of 90 degrees-180 degrees. In Experiment 4, a priming effect in biological motion was observed only if a prime corresponded to a range of deviations from upright orientation within which the display was spontaneously recognizable. The findings indicate that display orientation nonmonotonically affects the perception of biological motion. Moreover, top-down influence on the perception of biological motion is limited by display orientation.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology/MEG-Center, University of Tübingen, Germany. marina.pavlova@uni-tuebingen.de
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pavlova
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sokolov
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009039:Motion Perception; D009949:Orientation; D011601:Psychophysics; D016138:Walking