Högskolan i Skövde

Previous findings from studies of biological motion perception suggest that access to stored high-level knowledge about action categories contributes to the fast identification of actions depicted in point-light displays of biological motion.

Three priming experiments were conducted to investigate the automatic access to stored categorical level information in the visual processing of biological motion and the extent to which this access varies as a function of action orientation. The results show that activation of categorical level information occurs even when participants are given a task that does not require access to the categorical nature of the actions depicted in point-light displays. The results suggest that the visual processing of upright actions is indicative of Hochstein and Ahissar’s notion of vision at a glance, whereas inverted actions indicate vision with scrutiny.