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° to 90°, 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°–180°. 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.
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Pavlova, M., Sokolov, A. Orientation specificity in biological motion perception. Perception & Psychophysics 62, 889–899 (2000). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03212075
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03212075