Biological Motion Perception: The Roles of Global Configuration and Local Motion

Humans are remarkably adept at recognizing the motion of biological entities in complex visual scenes, even when it is depicted with a handful of point-lights attached to the head and major joints. Though much simplified, such point-light biological motion consists of both global configuration and local motion trajectories. Whereas most previous studies have emphasized the contribution of global form to biological motion perception, it has recently been shown that local biological motion can be processed independent of global configuration, revealing that local biological motion alone carries unique biological properties. Taken together, the evidence so far suggests that biological motion perception is a multilevel process in which each level makes distinct contributions.