Citation

Bidet-Ildei C, Chauvin A, Coello Y. Acta Psychol. 2010; 134(2): 215-224.

Affiliation

URECA, EA 1059, University of Lille-Nord de France, France; CERCA, UMR-CNRS 6234, Université de Poitiers, France.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.actpsy.2010.02.002

PMID

20356569

Abstract

Two experiments are presented addressing the issue of whether observing (visual priming) or producing (motor priming) a running activity during a very short period (30s) facilitates the perception of the direction of a point-light runner embedded in a dense dynamical mask. Experiment 1 showed that perceptual judgements improved and response time increased in the visual priming compared to the neutral priming condition (video of a moving car) in which judgements were at random. Because this effect was observed for male participants only, we performed a second experiment with the aim of evaluating the role of gender congruency in the visual priming condition. Results confirmed the facilitation effect and demonstrated that this effect was strictly dependent on the gender congruency between the perceiver and the priming information. Moreover, we found that actually producing a motor activity similar to the one presented in the video sequence improved to the same extent participants' judgement of the direction of the point-light runner, without any gender effect. As a whole, these findings argue in favour of common representation for the perception and the production of human movement and showed that the perception of biological motion can be improved by prior motor activity either performed or observed. However, the gender-dependent effect of visual priming suggested that motor repertoire differed in males and females.

Language: en