Humans anticipate the goal of other people’s point-light actions

Abstract

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This eye tracking study investigated the degree to which low-level kinematic information from manual point-light (PL) displays provides sufficient information to elicit anticipatory eye movements. We compared gaze performance of adults observing a biological point-light animation of a manual reaching action or a non-biological version of the same event. Participants anticipated the biological motion PL display but not a non-biological control condition. The present study is the first to demonstrate that low-level kinematic information can be used to anticipate the goal of other people's point-light actions.

Keywords

• Eye Movements
• Biological motion
• mirror neuron
• anticipation
• direct matching