Nonverbal bases of social perception: Developmental change in sensitivity to patterns of motion that reveal interpersonal events

Abstract

This study examined the development of sensitivity to specific patterns of movement that reveal interpersonal events. Preschoolers and adults viewed an animated film created by Heider and Simmel (1944), and then answered a set of probe questions about traits, emotions, and relationships that characterized the geometric figures in the film. Five-year-olds and adults gained similiar impressions of the film, and their attributions were similar to those that have emerged in openended descriptions of the film produced by adults in other experiments. The responses of 4-year-olds diverged from this pattern, as did, to a greater extent, the responses of 3-year-olds. The results were interpreted as supporting the view that sensitivity to patterns of motion that reveal interpersonal events emerges gradually during the late preschool years.A venerable approach to the study of attribution has been to elicit judgments of people and their behavior based on verbal descriptions. However, other research has explored the nonverbal basis of attribution. For example, Heider and Simmel (1944) demonstrated in a classic study that attributions pertaining to social or interpersonal events may be grounded in patterns of movement. Heider and Simmel created an animated film in which a large triangle, a small triangle, and a circle move at various speeds along different trajectories near a rectangular box. When adults describe this film, they virtually never speak in purely geometric terms, but instead describe a series of social or interpersonal events. Moreover, adults' descriptions typically converge on a common theme. PeopleThis work was carried out as part of the second author's Master's thesis, under the supervision of the third author. Portions of these data were presented at

Perception of Human Interaction Based on Motion Trajectories: From Aerial Videos to Decontextualized Animations

“…Almost all observers described the object movements in an anthropomorphic way, reporting a reliable impression of animacy and meaningful social interactions among the geometric shapes displayed in the decontextualized animation. Their results were replicated in other studies using similar videos for both human adults (Oatley & Yuill, ; Rimé, Boulanger, Laubin, Richir, & Stroobants, ) and preschoolers as young as 5 years old (Springer, Meier, & Berry, ).…”

Animated brain: A functional neuroimaging study on animacy experience

“…Thus, it is our interpretation of other entities as having a mind that ultimately leads to a perception of animacy (Santos et al, 2008;Tremoulet and Feldman, 2006). Movement features contributing to animacy perception include self-propelled motion, such as initiation of movement without an external cause (Leslie, 1984;Stewart, 1984), motion contingency (spatial and temporal synchrony) between objects (Bassili, 1976;Blakemore et al, 2003;Johnson, 2003;Johnson et al, 2001), and responsiveness to the motion by the environment (Abell et al, 2000;Blakemore et al, 2003Blakemore et al, , 2001Castelli et al, 2000;Leslie, 1984;Michotte, 1946;Rochat et al, 1997;Santos et al, 2008;Schlottmann and Surian, 1999;Schultz et al, 2005;Springer et al, 1996;Tremoulet and Feldman, 2006). In our own study, participants experienced an increase in animacy perception whenever the animations displayed a combination of movement cues (e.g.…”

From Guilford to Creative Synergy: Opening the Black Box of Team-Level Creativity

“…As Jehn (1997) pointed out, there is a mutually hazardous interplay between these two types of conflict. Interpersonal communication can be misinterpreted based on poor language choice or through nonverbal communication cues, which can display meaning, affect, status, and strategic information (Alibali, Flevares, & Goldin-Meadow, 1997;Jones & Remland, 1993;Springer, Meier, & Berry, 1996). Moreover, potentially beneficial conflict statements can have negative effects when interpersonal communication is difficult.…”