The perception of animacy pervades visual processing:
Selective engagement of cortical regions associated with faces and motion.
Gao, T., Scholl, B. J., & McCarthy, G. (under review)
Experiment 1: Passive viewing with an oddball detection task
The participant’s task was to attend to the moving white disc and covertly count the number of red probe dots that appeared within it. On Wolfpack blocks, all of the darts collectively oriented to the center of the disc, while on Perpendicular blocks, the darts oriented 90° away (clockwise) from the disc. Note that although the darts’ orientations were varied systematically relative to the disc, their randomly generated motion trajectories were completely independent of their orientation, and did not differ between Wolfpack and Perpendicular blocks.
Experiment 2: Active avoidance of the darts
Participants moved a green disc about the display attempting to avoid contact with any of the white objects. Every 12s, the behavior of the darts changed seamlessly between the Wolfpack, Perpendicular, and Flashing conditions.