Perception of Biological Motion in Central and Peripheral Visual Fields

Laicane, Ilze; Šķilters, Jurģis; Lyakhovetskii, Vsevolod; Zimaša, Elīna; Krumina, Gunta

doi:10.1515/prolas-2017-0056

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…The human visual system is highly sensitive to biological motion perception, and as previously demonstrated by other studies, biological motion stimuli can be detected even when the object is represented by a reduced number of dots or when the object is embedded in visual noise [ 11 , 68 ]. Pitcher and Ungerleider even proposed that in addition to ventral and dorsal neural pathways, there is a third visual pathway that is specialized for the dynamic aspects of social perception, i.e., biological motion perception [ 69 ]. This also fits the approach that assumes motion to be a core factor in visual segmentation [ 70 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Figure–Ground Segmentation and Biological Motion Perception in Peripheral Visual Field

et al. 2023

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Biological motion perception is a specific type of perceptual organization, during which a clear image of a moving human body is perceptually generated in virtue of certain core light dots representing the major joint movements. While the processes of biological motion perception have been studied extensively for almost a century, there is still a debate on whether biological motion task performance can be equally precise across all visual field or is central visual field specified for biological motion perception. The current study explores the processes of biological motion perception and figure–ground segmentation in the central and peripheral visual field, expanding the understanding of perceptual organization across different eccentricities. The method involved three different tasks of visual grouping: (1) a static visual grouping task, (2) a dynamic visual grouping task, and (3) a biological motion detection task. The stimuli in (1) and (2) were generated from 12–13 dots grouped by proximity and common fate, and, in (3), light dots representing human motion. All stimuli were embedded in static or dynamics visual noise and the threshold value for the number of noise dots in which the elements could still be grouped by proximity and/or common fate was determined. The results demonstrate that biological motion can be differentiated from the scrambled set of moving dots in a more intensive visual noise than static and dynamic visual grouping tasks. Furthermore, in all three visual tasks (static and dynamic grouping, and biological motion detection) the performance was significantly worse in the periphery than in the central visual field, and object magnification could not compensate for the reduced performance in any of the three grouping tasks. The preliminary results of nine participants indicate that (a) human motion perception involves specific perceptual processes, providing the high-accuracy perception of the human body and (b) the processes of figure–ground segmentation are governed by the bottom-up processes and the best performance can be achieved only when the object is demonstrated in the central visual field.

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