Integrating Biological Motion: The Role of Grouping in the Perception of Point-Light Actions

The human visual system is highly sensitive to biological motion and manages to organize even a highly reduced point-light stimulus into a vivid percept of human action. The current study investigated to what extent the origin of this saliency of point-light displays is related to its intrinsic Gestalt qualities. In particular, we studied whether biological motion perception is facilitated when the elements can be grouped according to good continuation and similarity as Gestalt principles of perceptual organization. We found that both grouping principles enhanced biological motion perception but their effects differed when stimuli were inverted. These results provide evidence that Gestalt principles of good continuity and similarity also apply to more complex and dynamic meaningful stimuli.