Both face recognition and biological-motion perception are strongly orientation-dependent. Recognition performance decreases if the stimuli are rotated with respect to their normal upright orientation. Here, the question whether this effect operates in egocentric coordinates or in environmental coordinates is examined. In addition to the use of rotated stimuli the observers were also rotated and tested both with a same–different face-recognition task and with a biological-motion detection task. A strong orientation effect was found that depended only on the stimulus orientation relative to the observer. This result clearly indicates that orientation effects in both stimulus domains operate in an egocentric frame of reference. This finding is discussed in terms of the particular requirement of extracting sophisticated information for social recognition and communication from faces and biological motion.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AlexanderR M, 1989“Optimization and gaits in the locomotion of vertebrates”Physiological Reviews691199–1227.
2.
AppelleS., 1972“Perception and discrimination as a function of stimulus orientation: The oblique effect in man and animals”Psychological Bulletin78266–278.
3.
AttneaveF.OlsonR K, 1967“Discriminability of stimuli varying in physical and retinal orientation”Journal of Experimental Psychology47323–328.
4.
BarclayC DCuttingJ EKozlowskiL T, 1978“Temporal and spatial factors in gait perception that influence gender recognition”Perception & Psychophysics23145–152.
5.
BertenthalB.ProffittD RKramerS J, 1987“Perception of biological motion by infants: Implementation of various processing constraints”Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance13577–585.
6.
BiedermanI., 1987“Recognition-by-components: A theory of human image understanding”Psychological Review94115–147.
7.
BiedermanI.GerhardsteinP C, 1993“Recognizing depth-rotated objects: Evidence and conditions for three-dimensional viewpoint invariance”Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance191162–1182; erratum 1994 20 80.
8.
BinghamG PSchmidtR CRosenblumL D, 1995“Dynamics and the orientation of kinematic forms in visual event recognition”Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance211473–1493.
9.
Buchanan-SmithH MHeeleyD W, 1993“Anisotropic axes in orientation perception are not retinotopically mapped”Perception221389–1402.
10.
BülthoffH HEdelmanS.TarrM J, 1995“How are three-dimensional objects represented in the brain?”Cerebral Cortex5247–260.
ColtheartM.CooperC M, 1972“The retinal reference of the tilt aftereffect”Perception & Psychophysics11321–324.
13.
CreemS HWragaM.ProffittD R, 2001“Imagining physically impossible self-rotations: Geometry is more important than gravity”Cognition8141–64.
14.
CuttingJ E, 1978“A program to generate synthetic walkers as dynamic point-light displays”Behavior Research Methods & Instrumentation1091–94.
15.
CuttingJ EMooreC.MorrisonR., 1988“Masking the motions of human gait”Perception & Psychophysics44339–347.
16.
DayR HWadeN J, 1969“The reference for visual normalization”American Journal of Psychology82191–197.
17.
DittrichW H, 1993“Action categories and the perception of biological motion”Perception2215–22.
18.
DittrichW HTrosciankoT.LeaS.MorganD., 1996“Perception of emotion from dynamic point-light displays represented in dance”Perception25727–738.
19.
EdelmanS.BülthoffH H, 1992“Orientation dependence in the recognition of familiar and novel views of three-dimensional objects”Vision Research322385–2400.
20.
EssockE A, 1980“The oblique effect of stimulus identification considered with respect to two classes of oblique effects”Perception937–46.
21.
FerranteD.GerbinoW.RockI., 1995“Retinal vs environmental orientation”Acta Psychologica8825–32.
22.
FriedmanA.LawrenceH D, 1996“The importance of being upright: Use of environmental and viewer-centered reference frames in shape discriminations of novel three-dimensional objects”Memory & Cognition24285–295.
23.
GoldmeierE., 1937“Über Ähnlichkeit bei gesehenen Figuren”Psychologische Forschung21146–208.
24.
GrosB LBlakeR.HirisE., 1998“Anisotropies in visual motion perception: A fresh look”Journal of the Optical Society of America A152003–2011.
25.
HechtH.KaiserM KBanksM S, 1996“Gravitational acceleration as a cue for absolute size and distance?”Perception & Psychophysics581066–1075.
26.
JohanssonG., 1973“Visual perception of biological motion and a model for its analysis”Perception & Psychophysics14201–211.
27.
JohanssonG., 1976“Spatio-temporal differentiation and integration in visual motion perception”Psychological Research38379–393.
28.
JokischD.TrojeN F, submitted “Biological motion as a cue for the perception of size”Journal of Vision.
29.
JolicoeurP., 1988“Mental rotation and the identification of disoriented objects”Canadian Journal of Psychology42461–478.
30.
KanizsaG.TampieriG., 1968“Nuove osservationi sull’ orientamento retinico ed ambientale”, in Ricerche Sperimentali sulla Percezione Eds KanizsaG.VicarioG. (Trieste: Università degli Studi di Trieste).
31.
KöhlerW., 1940Dynamics in Psychology (New York: Liveright).
32.
KozlowskiL TCuttingJ E, 1977“Recognizing the sex of a walker from a dynamic point-light display”Perception & Psychophysics21575–580.
33.
MachE., 1914The Analysis of Sensations (Chicago and London: Open Court).
34.
MacmillanN ACreelmanC D, 1991Detection Theory: A User's Guide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
35.
MarrD., 1982Vision (New York: W H Freeman).
36.
MitkinA APavlovaM A, 1990“Changing a natural orientation: Recognition of biological motion pattern by children and adults”Psychologische Beiträge3228–35.
37.
OnleyJ WVolkmannJ., 1958“The visual perception of perpendicularity”American Journal of Psychology71504–516.
38.
PavlovaM.SokolovA., 2000“Orientation specificity in biological motion perception”Perception & Psychophysics62889–899.
39.
PittengerJ B, 1985“Estimation of pendulum length from information in motion”Perception14247–256.
40.
PittengerJ B, 1990“Detection of violations of the law of pendulum motion: Observers' sensitivity to the relation between period and length”Ecological Psychology255–81.
41.
RockI., 1973Orientation and Form (New York: Academic Press).
