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Self-recognition of avatar motion: how do I know it's me?
Richard Cook1, Alan Johnston, Cecilia Heyes
1Cognitive, Perceptual and Brain Sciences, Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, London, UK. r.cook@ucl.ac.uk
Proceedings. Biological Sciences
|July 29, 2011
Summary
Individuals better recognize their own body movements than friends
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Human Perception
- Motor Control
Background:
- Individuals exhibit superior recognition of their own whole-body movements compared to those of friends when form cues are absent and viewed from a third-person perspective.
- This self-recognition advantage suggests a potential contribution from the motor system, despite the rarity of observing one's own body in motion from such viewpoints.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the dissociation between self-recognition and recognition of friends' motion.
- To determine the mechanisms underlying self-recognition of facial motion, specifically the role of temporal characteristics of actions.
Main Methods:
- Experiment 1: Compared recognition of self-produced versus friends' motion, assessing sensitivity to orientation.
- Experiment 2: Utilized selectively disrupted avatar motion to analyze self-recognition of facial movements.
- Manipulated feature configurations, trajectories, and temporal characteristics of avatar motion.
Main Results:
- Recognition of self-produced and friends' motion dissociated; only friends' motion recognition was sensitive to orientation.
- Self-recognition of facial motion was unaffected by disruption of feature configurations and trajectories but eliminated by temporal distortion.
- Inverted self-recognition remained unaffected by disruption of feature configurations and trajectories.
Conclusions:
- Self-recognition of motion relies on knowledge of the local temporal characteristics of one's own actions, likely derived from rich first-person sensory feedback.
- Recognition of familiar others' motion signatures may depend more on configural and topographic visual cues.
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