title: Individual differences in the perception of biological motion and fragmented figures are not correlated.
abstract: WE LIVE IN A CLUTTERED, DYNAMIC VISUAL ENVIRONMENT THAT POSES A CHALLENGE FOR THE VISUAL SYSTEM: for objects, including those that move about, to be perceived, information specifying those objects must be integrated over space and over time. Does a single, omnibus mechanism perform this grouping operation, or does grouping depend on separate processes specialized for different feature aspects of the object? To address this question, we tested a large group of healthy young adults on their abilities to perceive static fragmented figures embedded in noise and to perceive dynamic point-light biological motion figures embedded in dynamic noise. There were indeed substantial individual differences in performance on both tasks, but none of the statistical tests we applied to this data set uncovered a significant correlation between those performance measures. These results suggest that the two tasks, despite their superficial similarity, require different segmentation and grouping processes that are largely unrelated to one another. Whether those processes are embodied in distinct neural mechanisms remains an open question.
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Seoul National University Seoul, South Korea ; Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University Nashville, TN, USA.
authors.forename: Eunice L
authors.initials: EL
authors.lastname: Jung
authors.forename: Asieh
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Zadbood
authors.forename: Sang-Hun
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Andrew J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Tomarken
authors.forename: Randolph
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Blake
keywords: biological motion; fragmented figures; individual differences; perceptual grouping