Cite as:
Troje N F, Geyer H, 2002, "Aftereffects in biological motion perception" Perception 31 ECVP Abstract Supplement

Aftereffects in biological motion perception

N F Troje, H Geyer

The human visual system shows an impressive sensitivity to subtleties in animate motion patterns carrying biologically relevant information. Frontal views of biological motion point-light walkers can be classified with respect to the gender of the walker with high accuracy. Here, we document pronounced adaptation effects that alter the perceived gender of a point-light walker. Stimuli were generated by a morphing technique which provides smooth transitions between male and female walking patterns. Observers were first presented with five walking cycles of either an exaggerated male walker, an exaggerated female walker, or a neutral walker. Subsequently, they were tested with 700 ms presentations of walkers sampled along the male - female walking axis. Their task was to indicate whether the test walker was a man or a woman. A psychometric function was fitted to the data. Adaptation to the male walker results in a pronounced shift of perceived gender of the test stimulus. A neutral walker is perceived to be female after adaptation with the exaggerated male walker, and male after adaptation with the exaggerated female walker. This demonstrates that adaptation can occur not only within low-level vision processes but also at high-level information-processing stages.

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