Perception of Biological Motions The first step in understanding human actions is to perceptually organize the constituent movements in a manner consistent with the causal structure of the action. We have relied on moving point-light displays depicting biological motions to study this question, because observers are then forced to perceptually organize the stimuli in terms of the movements of the limbs without any contextual cues specified by featural information. In spite of the apparent ambiguity in these displays, adult observers are quite adept at extracting a coherent and unique structure from the moving point-lights. Our research investigates the origins of this perceptual competence and the specific mechanisms that contribute to its success. Selected Publications: [pdf] Booth, A., Pinto, J., & Bertenthal, B. I. (2002). Perception of the symmetircal patterning of human gait by infants. Developmental Psychology, 38, 554-563. [pdf] Golinkoff, R. M., Chung, H. L., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Liu, J., Bertenthal, B. I., Brand, R., Maguire, M. J., & Hennon, E. (2002). Young children can extend motion verbs to point-light displays. Developmental Psychology, 38, 604-614. [pdf] Grezes, J., Fonlupt, P., Bertenthal, B., Delon-Martin, C., Mazoyer, P., & Decety, J. (2001). Does perception of biological motions rely on specific brain regions? NeuroImage, 13,775-785. [pdf] Bertenthal, B. I. & Pinto, J. (1994). Global processing of biological motions. Psychological Science, 5, 221-225. [pdf] Bertenthal, B. I. & Pinto, J. (1993). Dynamical constraints in the perception and production of human movements. In E. Thelen & L. Smith (Eds.), Dynamical Systems in Development. Vol. 2: Applications (pp. 209-239). Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books.

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