Seeing social events: The visual specialization for dyadic human–human interactions.

Papeo, Liuba; Abassi, Etienne

doi:10.1037/xhp0000646

Cited by 50 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Behavioral research suggests that key properties of social interaction, such as action coherence and agent/patient-role information, correlate with visuo-spatial features that are accessed quickly in visual events (Hafri et al, 2013(Hafri et al, , 2018Glanemann et al, 2016). Moreover, multiple bodies in configurations that imply interaction (e.g., face-to-face), are detected, recognized, and remembered better than unrelated bodies (Ding et al, 2017;Papeo and Abassi, 2019;Vestner et al, 2019).…”

Section: Significance Statementmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Representation of Two-Body Shapes in the Human Visual Cortex

Abassi

Papeo

2019

J. Neurosci.

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Human social nature has shaped visual perception. A signature of the relationship between vision and sociality is a particular visual sensitivity to social entities such as faces and bodies. We asked whether human vision also exhibits a special sensitivity to spatial relations that reliably correlate with social relations. In general, interacting people are more often situated face-to-face than back-to-back. Using functional MRI and behavioral measures in female and male human participants, we show that visual sensitivity to social stimuli extends to images including two bodies facing toward (vs away from) each other. In particular, the inferior lateral occipital cortex, which is involved in visual-object perception, is organized such that the inferior portion encodes the number of bodies (one vs two) and the superior portion is selectively sensitive to the spatial relation between bodies (facing vs nonfacing). Moreover, functionally localized, body-selective visual cortex responded to facing bodies more strongly than identical, but nonfacing, bodies. In this area, multivariate pattern analysis revealed an accurate representation of body dyads with sharpening of the representation of single-body postures in facing dyads, which demonstrates an effect of visual context on the perceptual analysis of a body. Finally, the cost of body inversion (upside-down rotation) on body recognition, a behavioral signature of a specialized mechanism for body perception, was larger for facing versus nonfacing dyads. Thus, spatial relations between multiple bodies are encoded in regions for body perception and affect the way in which bodies are processed.

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Section: Significance Statementmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Representation of Two-Body Shapes in the Human Visual Cortex

Abassi

Papeo

2019

J. Neurosci.

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“…This methodological choice allowed testing the specific hypothesis behind the study, according to which visual perception areas encode for visuo-spatial cues associated with social interaction (i.e., spatial proximity, body orientation and approaching behaviour), rather than the social interaction itself. Based on the above results (Papeo et al 2017a;Papeo and Abassi 2019;Vestner et al 2019; Abassi and Papeo 2020), we expected to find an advantage in processing facing dyads, which we sought to capture in the neural activity (through univariate and multivariate analyses of the fMRI signal, Study 1), as well as in the participants' performance in visual recognition of multiple-body scenarios (Study 2).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Moving toward versus away from another: how body motion direction changes the representation of bodies and actions in the visual cortex

Bellot¹,

Abassi²,

Papeo³

2020

Preprint

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Representing multiple agents and their mutual relations is a prerequisite to understand social events. Using functional MRI on human adults, we show that visual areas dedicated to body-form and body-motion perception contribute to processing social events, by holding the representation of multiple moving bodies and encoding the spatial relations between them. In particular, seeing animations of human bodies facing and moving toward (vs. away from) each other, increased neural activity in the body-selective cortex (extrastriate body area -EBA) and posterior superior temporal sulcus for biological-motion perception (bm-pSTS). In those areas, representation of body postures and movements, as well as of the overall scene, was more accurate for facing-body (vs. non-facing body) stimuli. Effective connectivity analysis with Dynamic Causal Modeling revealed increased coupling between EBA and bm-pSTS during perception of facing-body stimuli. The attunement of human vision to multiple-body scenes involving perceptual cues of interaction such as face-to-face positioning and approaching behaviour, was further supported by the participants’ better performance in a match-to-sample task with facing-body vs. non-facing body stimuli. Thus, visuo-spatial cues of interaction in multiple-person scenarios affect the perceptual representation of body and body motion and, by promoting functional integration, streamline the process from body perception to action representation.

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“…Papeo et al [7] found that this perceptual grouping effect (a greater inversion effect for engaged dyads than disengaged) persisted when the heads of the dyads were blurred. More recently Papeo and Abassi [16] showed that blurring the head of bodies does not affect the signature of the dyadic inversion effect. Thus, there is evidence that head orientation is not necessary in eliciting the dyad inversion effect.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of emotion in the dyad inversion effect

Strachan¹,

Sebanz²,

Knoblich³

2019

PLoS ONE

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When observing two individuals, people are faster and better able to identify them as other people if they are facing each other than if they are facing away from each other. This advantage disappears when the images are inverted, suggesting that the visual system is particularly sensitive to dyads in this upright configuration, and perceptually groups socially engaged dyads into a single holistic unit. This dyadic inversion effect was obtained with images of full bodies. Body information was sufficient to elicit this effect even when information about head orientation was absent. However, it has not been tested whether the dyadic inversion effect occurs with face images and whether the emotions displayed by the faces modulate the effect. In three experiments we obtained robust dyadic inversion with face images. Holistic processing of upright face pairs occurred for neutral, happy, and sad faces but not for angry and fearful face pairs. Thus, perceptual grouping of individuals into pairs appears to depend on the emotional expressions of individual faces and the interpersonal relations they imply.

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Seeing social events: The visual specialization for dyadic human–human interactions.

Cited by 50 publications

References 40 publications

The Representation of Two-Body Shapes in the Human Visual Cortex

The Representation of Two-Body Shapes in the Human Visual Cortex

Moving toward versus away from another: how body motion direction changes the representation of bodies and actions in the visual cortex

The role of emotion in the dyad inversion effect

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