Understanding Intention from Minimal Displays of Human Activity

The impression of animacy from the motion of simple shapes typically relies on synthetically defined motion patterns resulting in pseudo-representations of human movement. Thus it is unclear how these synthetic motions relate to actual biological agents. To clarify this relationship, we introduce a novel approach that uses video processing to reduce full-video displays of human interactions into animacy displays; thus creating animate shapes whose motions are directly derived from human actions. Furthermore, this technique facilitates the comparison of interactions in animacy displays from different viewpoints: an area that has yet to be researched. We introduce two experiments in which animacy displays were created showing 6 dyadic interactions from two viewpoints, incorporating cues altering the quantity of visual information available. Using a 6 AFC task, results indicate that animacy displays can be created via this naturalistic technique and reveal a previously unreported advantage for viewing intentional motion from an overhead viewpoint