Complete Schedule

The Effect of Inversion on Biological Motion Perception Tasks

Presentation Type

Poster Presentation

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that inverting a stimulus makes it more difficult to make judgments about that stimulus. For example, when a video of a person walking is inverted, it is much difficult to correctly identify the person’s sex. We sought to determine whether this inversion effect applies across different tasks. We displayed points of light representing a person walking and asked participants to judge whether the person was male or female, happy or sad, calm or nervous, or heavy or light. In an initial experiment we determined how much different tasks relied on motion and form information. Results showed that judging sex and weight relied on form more than judgments of emotion. In a second experiment, we determined how much inversion affected performance in each task. Early results from this experiment suggest that judgments about the actor’s sex is affected more by inversion than other judgments. These results support and extend recent findings that inversion is particularly disruptive to being able to perceive whether the stimulus represents a male or a female.

Start Date

25-4-2015 12:00 PM

End Date

25-4-2015 1:15 PM

Faculty Advisor

Eric Hiris

Comments

Location: Great Reading Room, Seerley Hall

File Format

application/pdf

Electronic copy is not available through UNI ScholarWorks.

Share

COinS
 
Apr 25th, 12:00 PM Apr 25th, 1:15 PM

The Effect of Inversion on Biological Motion Perception Tasks

Previous studies have shown that inverting a stimulus makes it more difficult to make judgments about that stimulus. For example, when a video of a person walking is inverted, it is much difficult to correctly identify the person’s sex. We sought to determine whether this inversion effect applies across different tasks. We displayed points of light representing a person walking and asked participants to judge whether the person was male or female, happy or sad, calm or nervous, or heavy or light. In an initial experiment we determined how much different tasks relied on motion and form information. Results showed that judging sex and weight relied on form more than judgments of emotion. In a second experiment, we determined how much inversion affected performance in each task. Early results from this experiment suggest that judgments about the actor’s sex is affected more by inversion than other judgments. These results support and extend recent findings that inversion is particularly disruptive to being able to perceive whether the stimulus represents a male or a female.