Motion induction from biological motion

Abstract

A new type of motion illusion is described in which ambiguous motion becomes unidirectional on superimposition of a human figure walking on a treadmill. A point-light walker in profile was superimposed on a vertical counterphase grating backdrop. Eleven naïve observers judged the apparent direction of motion against the grating as left or right in a two-alternative forced-choice task and found that the grating appeared to drift in a direction opposite to the walking. The illusion disappeared when the point lights moved in scrambled configurations. This indicates that the illusion is caused by biological motion that provides recognition of gaits. A human figure walking backwards produced no illusion because of the difficulty in identifying the gait. This indicates that the illusion is determined by translational motion rather than form represented from biological motion.