Overview
Our research investigates how people perceive human movement and use it to recognise actions, emotions, identity and intention. Even when the body is represented by only a small number of moving points, observers can recover rich information about who someone is, what they are doing and how they feel.
We examine the visual and neural mechanisms underlying this ability, the movement features that support recognition and how perception is shaped by expertise and individual differences. This work connects fundamental research on biological motion with motion capture, computer animation, social perception and action understanding.
Research Themes
Our research examines how movement communicates information across five connected areas, from recognising biological motion to understanding the influence of neural mechanisms, expertise and individual variation.
Methods and Capabalities
We combine precise movement recording, controlled visual experiments, brain imaging and computational modelling to investigate how human movement is represented and understood.
Selected Publication
Aesthetic Preferences for Causality in Biological Movements Arise from Visual Processes
Yi-Chia Chen, Frank Pollick and Hongjing Lu
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 29(5), 1803–1811, 2022.
This study found that observers preferred movements consistent with gravity and body displacement, suggesting that automatic visual processes contribute to aesthetic responses to human action. Read the publication
Biological Motion Perception in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Meta-Analysis
Greta Krasimirova Todorova, Rosalind Elizabeth McBean Hatton and Frank Earl Pollick
Molecular Autism, 10, 49, 2019.
This meta-analysis examined biological-motion perception across autistic and non-autistic participants, identifying how differences depend on the task and type of movement information presented. Read the publication
The Role of Kinematics in Cortical Regions for Continuous Human Motion Perception
Philip McAleer, Frank E. Pollick, Scott A. Love, Frances Crabbe and Jeffrey M. Zacks
Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 14(1), 307–318, 2014.
This fMRI study investigated how changing kinematic properties of continuous human movement relate to activity in visual-motion and action-observation regions. Read the publication
Understanding Intention from Minimal Displays of Human Activity
Philip McAleer and Frank E. Pollick
Behavior Research Methods, 40(3), 830–839, 2008.
This research transformed recorded human interactions into minimal animacy displays, demonstrating that observers can identify intentions from highly reduced patterns derived from natural actions. Read the publication
A Motion Capture Library for the Study of Identity, Gender and Emotion Perception from Biological Motion
Yingliang Ma, Helena M. Paterson and Frank E. Pollick
Behavior Research Methods, 38(1), 134–141, 2006.
This work introduced a large library of motion-captured actions performed by different actors and in several emotional styles, supporting behavioural, computational and animation research. Read the publication