We examined whether illusory self-motion perception ("vection") induced by viewing upward and downward grating motion stimuli can alter the emotional valence of recollected autobiographical episodic memories. We found that participants recollected positive episodes more often while perceiving upward vection. However, when we tested a small moving…

Two significant questions in cognitive and developmental science are first, whether objects and events are selected for attention based on their features (featural processing) or the configuration of their features (configural processing), and second, how these modes of processing develop. These questions have been addressed in part with…

To avoid sensory overload, people are able to selectively attend to a particular color or direction of motion while ignoring irrelevant stimuli that differ from the desired one. We show here for the first time that it is also possible to selectively attend to a specific line orientation--but with an important caveat: orientations that are…

Research on perception-action links has focused on an interpersonal level, demonstrating effects of observing individual actions on performance. The present study investigated perception-action matching at an inter-group level. Pairs of participants responded to hand movements that were performed by two individuals who used one hand each or they…

Dynamic tasks often require fast adaptations to new viewpoints. It has been shown that automatic spatial updating is triggered by proprioceptive motion cues. Here, we demonstrate that purely visual cues are sufficient to trigger automatic updating. In five experiments, we examined spatial updating in a dynamic attention task in which participants…

Few experimental studies investigate the mechanisms by which young children develop sex-typed activity preferences. Gender self-labeling followed by selective imitation of same-sex models currently is considered a primary socialization mechanism. Research with prenatally androgenized girls and non-human primates also suggests an innate male…

A growing body of work suggests that narrative comprehension involves the simulation of the described events and actions (e.g., Barsalou, 2008; Matlock, 2004). Preliterate children's ability to simulate a narrative character's movements is explored here in three studies. Children's simulations of a character's movements were found to be…

We investigated infants' ability to recognize the similarity between observed and implied goals when actions differed in surface-level motion details. In two experiments, 10- to 12-month-olds were habituated to an actor manipulating an object and then shown test actions in which the actor contacted the object with a novel hand configuration that…

Gender stereotypes have been implicated in sex-typed perceptions of facial emotion. Such interpretations were recently called into question because facial cues of emotion are confounded with sexually dimorphic facial cues. Here we examine the role of visual cues and gender stereotypes in perceptions of biological motion displays, thus overcoming…

The human visual system is extremely sensitive to biological signals around us. In the current study, we demonstrate that biological motion walking direction can induce robust reflexive attentional orienting. Following a brief presentation of a central point-light walker walking towards either the left or right direction, observers' performance…

The relation between event apprehension and utterance formulation was examined in children and adults. English-speaking adults and 4-year-olds viewed motion events while their eye movements were monitored. Half of the participants in each age group described each event (Linguistic task), whereas the other half studied the events for an upcoming…

A highly familiar type of movement occurs whenever a person walks towards you. In the present study, we investigated whether this type of motion has an effect on face processing. We took a range of different 3D head models and placed them on a single, identical 3D body model. The resulting figures were animated to approach the observer. In a first…

Personality trait attribution can underpin important social decisions and yet requires little effort; even a brief exposure to a photograph can generate lasting impressions. Body movement is a channel readily available to observers and allows judgements to be made when facial and body appearances are less visible; e.g., from great distances.…

Investigations of multiple-object tracking aim to further our understanding of how people perform common activities such as driving in traffic. However, tracking tasks in the laboratory have overlooked a crucial component of much real-world object tracking: self-motion. We investigated the hypothesis that keeping track of one's own movement…

The introduction of (Talmy, 1985), (Talmy, 1985) and (Talmy, 2000) typology sparked significant interest in linguistic relativity in the arena of motion language. Through careful analysis of the conflation patterns evident in the language of motion events, Talmy noted that one class of languages, V-languages, tends to encode path along with the…