Effect of spatial context on perceived walking direction

Contextual modulation occurs for many aspects of high-level vision but is relatively unexplored for the perception of walking direction. In a recent study, we observed an effect of the temporal context on perceived walking direction. Here, we examined the spatial contextual modulation by measuring the perceived direction of a target point-light walker in the presence of two flanker walkers, one on each side. Experiment 1 followed a within-subjects design. Participants (n = 30) completed a spatial context task by judging the walking direction of the target in 13 different conditions: a walker alone in the center or with two flanking walkers either intact or scrambled at a flanker deviation of ±15°, ±30°, or ±45°. For comparison, participants completed an adaptation task where they reported the walking direction of a target after adaptation to ±30° walking direction. We found the expected repulsive effects in the adaptation task but attractive effects in the spatial context task. In Experiment 2 (n = 40), we measured the tuning of spatial contextual modulation across a wide range of flanker deviation magnitudes ranging from 15° to 165° in 15° intervals. Our results showed significant attractive effects across a wide range of flanker walking directions with the peak effect at around 30°. The assimilative versus repulsive effects of spatial contextual modulation and temporal adaptation suggest dissociable neural mechanisms, but they may operate on the same population of sensory channels coding for walking direction, as evidenced by similarity in the peak tuning across the walking direction of the inducers.