title: Backward-walking biological motion orients attention to moving away instead of moving toward.
abstract: Walking direction is an important attribute of biological motion because it carries key information, such as the specific intention of the walker. Although it is known that spatial attention is guided by walking direction, it remains unclear whether this attentional shift is reflexive (i.e., constantly shifts to the walking direction) or not. A richer interpretation of this effect is that attention is guided to seek the information that is necessary to understand the motion. To investigate this issue, we examined how backward-walking biological motion orients attention because the intention of walking backward is usually to avoid something that walking forward would encounter. The results showed that attention was oriented to the walking-away direction of biological motion instead of the walking-toward direction (Experiment 1), and this effect was not due to the gaze direction of biological motion (Experiment 2). Our findings suggest that the attentional shift triggered by walking direction is not reflexive, thus providing support for the rich interpretation of these attentional effects.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Xixi Campus, Hangzhou, 310028, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Xiaowei
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Ding
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Xixi Campus, Hangzhou, 310028, People's Republic of China.|Department of Psychology, Ningbo University, Ningbo, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yin
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Xixi Campus, Hangzhou, 310028, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Rende
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Shui
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Xixi Campus, Hangzhou, 310028, People's Republic of China. jifanzhou@zju.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Jifan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Xixi Campus, Hangzhou, 310028, People's Republic of China. mwshen@zju.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Mowei
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Shen
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009039:Motion Perception; D009949:Orientation; D011930:Reaction Time; D013028:Space Perception; D016138:Walking; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Backward walking; Biological motion; Lean interpretation; Rich interpretation; Spatial attention