The Effect of Object and Event Orientation on Perception of Biological Motion

Detection and recognition of point-light walking is reduced when the display is inverted, or turned upside down. This indicates that past experience influences biological motion perception. The effect could be the result of either presenting the human form in a novel orientation or presenting the event of walking in a novel orientation, as the two are confounded in the case of walking on feet. This study teased apart the effects of object and event orientation by examining detection accuracy for upright and inverted displays of a pointlight figure walking on his hands. Detection of this walker was greater in the upright display, which had a familiar event orientation and an unfamiliar object orientation, than in the inverted display, which had a familiar object orientation and an unfamiliar event orientation. This finding supports accounts of event perception and recognition that are based on spatiotemporal patterns of motion associated with the dynamics of an event.