Communicative interactions in point-light displays: Choosing among multiple response alternatives

Behavior Research Methods, Oct 2015

Vision scientists are increasingly relying on the point-light technique as a way to investigate the perception of human motion. Unfortunately, the lack of standardized stimulus sets has so far limited the use of this technique for studying social interaction. Here, we describe a new tool to study the interaction between two agents starting from point-light displays: the Communicative Interaction Database - 5AFC format (CID-5). The CID-5 consists of 14 communicative and seven non-communicative individual actions performed by two agents. Stimuli were constructed by combining motion capture techniques and 3-D animation software to provide precise control over the computer-generated actions. For each action stimulus, we provide coordinate files and movie files depicting the action as seen from four different perspectives. Furthermore, the archive contains a text file with a list of five alternative action descriptions to construct forced-choice paradigms. In order to validate the CID-5 format, we provide normative data collected to assess action identification within a 5AFC tasks. The CID-5 archive is freely downloadable from http://​bsb-lab.​org/​research/​ and from the supplementary materials of this article.

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Communicative interactions in point-light displays: Choosing among multiple response alternatives

Communicative interactions in point-light displays: Choosing among multiple response alternatives Valeria Manera 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Tabea von der Lühe 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Leonhard Schilbach 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Karl Verfaillie 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Cristina Becchio 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 0 Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Heinrich-Heine-University of Düsseldorf, Rhineland State Clinics Düsseldorf , Düsseldorf , Germany 1 CoBTek Laboratory, University of Nice Sophia Antipolis , Nice , France 2 Cristina Becchio 3 Department of Psychology, University of Turin , Via Po 14, 10123 Turin , Italy 4 Department of Robotics, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia , Genova , Italy 5 Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, KU Leuven , Leuven , Belgium 6 Department of Psychiatry, University Hospital Cologne , Cologne , Germany 7 Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry , Munich , Germany Vision scientists are increasingly relying on the point-light technique as a way to investigate the perception of human motion. Unfortunately, the lack of standardized stimulus sets has so far limited the use of this technique for studying social interaction. Here, we describe a new tool to study the interaction between two agents starting from pointlight displays: the Communicative Interaction Database - 5AFC format (CID-5). The CID-5 consists of 14 communicative and seven non-communicative individual actions performed by two agents. Stimuli were constructed by combining motion capture techniques and 3-D animation software to provide precise control over the computer-generated actions. For each action stimulus, we provide coordinate files and movie files depicting the action as seen from four different perspectives. Furthermore, the archive contains a text file with a list of five alternative action descriptions to construct forced-choice paradigms. In order to validate the CID-5 format, we provide normative data collected to assess action identification within a 5AFC tasks. The CID-5 archive is freely downloadable from http://bsb-lab.org/research/ and from XXX. Communicative interaction; Point-light; Biological motion; 5AFC; Database - For humans, like many other species, survival depends on the ability to perceive what others are doing and predict what they may be intending to do. Biological motion provides a rich source of information in support of this skill (Blake & Shiffrar, 2007; Johansson, 1973). Human observers have no trouble identifying what an actor is doing in a given pointlight display (e.g., Dittrich, 1993; Vanrie & Verfaillie, 2004). Even when the range of potential activities is quite large, they readily recognize individual actions and the associated emotions (Alaerts, Nackaerts, Meyns, Swinnen, & Wenderoth, 2011; Brownlow, Dixon, Egbert, & Radcliffe, 1997; Dittrich, Troscianko, Lea, & Morgan, 1996; Pollick, Paterson, Bruderlin, & Sanford, 2001; van Boxtel & Lu, 2011; Walk & Homan, 1984), are able to understand the intentions of the actor, and can detect a violation of his/her expectations (Runeson & Frykholm, 1983). These findings highlight the importance of biological motion in the recognition of individual actions, i.e., actions performed by a single agent in isolation. Whether and how humans use biological motion to understand social interactions, however, is far less clear. In an influential study, Neri and colleagues (Neri, Luu, & Levi, 2006) first demonstrated that human observers integrate biological motion information from multiple individuals. Participants observed point-light displays of two agents fighting or dancing together. When the agents interacted in a meaningful synchronized fashion, visual detection of one agent was enhanced by the presence of the second agent. This suggests that the human visual system relies on the interaction dynamics between the two agents to retrieve information relating to each agent individually (see also Thurman & Lu, 2014). Subsequent studies extended these findings by showing that, even without any physical contact between the agents, the gestures of one agent can serve as a predictor of the actions of the second agent (Manera, Becchio, Schouten, Bara, & Verfaillie, 2011a; Manera, Del Giudice, Bara, Verfaillie, & Becchio, 2011b; Manera, Schouten, Verfaillie, & Becchio, 2013). Recent works have begun to explore perception of social interaction from biological motion in infants (Galazka, Roché, Nystrom, & Falck-Ytter, 2014) and pathological populations such as patients with autism spectrum disorder (Centelles, Assaiante, Etchegoyhen, Bouvard, & Schmitz, 2013; von der Luhe et al., submitted) and schizophrenia (Okruszek et al., 2015). The exact characteristics and the neural substrate supporting interpersonal action coding, however, remain unclear. Although the point-light technique offers many advantages to researchers investigating perception of biological motion, the complexity of constructing stimuli depicting interacting pointlight agents has so f (...truncated)


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Valeria Manera, Tabea von der Lühe, Leonhard Schilbach, Karl Verfaillie, Cristina Becchio. Communicative interactions in point-light displays: Choosing among multiple response alternatives, Behavior Research Methods, 2016, pp. 1580-1590, Volume 48, Issue 4, DOI: 10.3758/s13428-015-0669-x