Cite as:
Hemeren P E, Palsdottir S, 2003, "Category effects and orientation specificity in inverted and upright displays of biological motion" Perception 32 ECVP Abstract Supplement

Category effects and orientation specificity in inverted and upright displays of biological motion

P E Hemeren, S Palsdottir

The visual recognition of human actions in biological-motion displays has been shown to be orientation-specific. Using short-term priming, Verfaillie (2000 Brain and Cognition 44 192 - 213) found significantly more priming for congruent in-depth displays than for displays that differed in their in-depth orientation. Pavlova and Sokolov (2000 Perception & Psychophysics 62 889 - 899) used a long-term priming paradigm and found similar effects when displays were rotated in the frontoparallel plane. The priming effect, however, was limited to congruent upright displays. Pavlova and Sokolov failed to find a pronounced priming effect for congruent inverted displays. While the congruency effect for in-depth displays appears to hold for right-facing and left-facing point-light walkers, it appears to hold only for upright-oriented congruent displays. We addressed this issue of orientation specificity for inverted displays using a short-term priming paradigm similar to that of Verfaillie (2000). In addition to a point-light walker, we also used two other actions in order to find whether priming would vary as a function of orientation, congruence, and type of action. Subjects were presented with either upright, inverted, or 'neutral' displays and then responded by indicating whether they thought the display was presented upright or inverted; there was no feedback. An analysis of the reaction times revealed significantly greater priming for congruent displays than for incongruent displays. Similar levels of significant priming were found for both upright and inverted congruent displays. A significant 3-way interaction also suggests that the different actions tend to prime themselves and other actions differently in the context of orientation and congruence.

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