Visual Aftereffects for Walking Actions Reveal Underlying Neural Mechanisms for Action Recognition

Nick Barraclough, Tjeerd Jellema

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The results of this study illustrate a new high-level visual aftereffect: Observing actors walking forward, without horizontal translation, makes subsequent actors appear to walk backward, and the opposite effect is obtained after observing backward walking. We used this aftereffect, which cannot be explained by simple low-level adaptation to motion direction, to investigate the properties of neural mechanisms underlying recognition of walking actions. Our results suggest that the perception of walking and the perception of static images of actors in walking postures rely on common brain mechanisms that are primarily object centered, rather than viewer centered, and that are blind to the identity of the actor. These results, obtained with human psychophysical adaptation techniques, support previous evidence accumulated using single-unit recording in nonhuman primates. In addition, these results provide evidence that current models of human action recognition require an object-centered processing stage.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)87-94
Number of pages8
JournalPsychological Science
Volume22
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2011

Keywords

  • visual perception
  • social perception
  • vision
  • social cognition
  • EXTRASTRIATE BODY AREA
  • BIOLOGICAL MOTION
  • OBJECT RECOGNITION
  • IMPLIED MOTION
  • STATIC IMAGES
  • PERCEPTION
  • ADAPTATION
  • NEURONS
  • REPRESENTATION
  • VIEWPOINT

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