Gao Tao, Newman George E, Scholl Brian J
Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520-8205, United States.
Cogn Psychol. 2009 Sep;59(2):154-79. doi: 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2009.03.001. Epub 2009 Jun 4.
Psychologists have long been captivated by the perception of animacy - the fact that even simple moving shapes may appear to engage in animate, intentional, and goal-directed movements. Here we report several new types of studies of a particularly salient form of perceived animacy: chasing, in which one shape (the 'wolf') pursues another shape ('the sheep'). We first demonstrate two new cues to perceived chasing -chasing subtlety (the degree to which the wolf deviates from perfectly 'heat-seeking' pursuit) and directionality (whether and how the shapes 'face' each other). We then use these cues to show how it is possible to assess the objective accuracy of such percepts, and to distinguish the immediate perception of chasing from those more subtle (but nevertheless real) types of 'stalking' that cannot be readily perceived. We also report several methodological advances. Previous studies of the perception of animacy have faced two major challenges: (a) it is difficult to measure perceived animacy with quantitative precision; and (b) task demands make it difficult to distinguish perception from higher-level inferences about animacy. We show how these challenges can be met, at least in our case study of perceived chasing, via tasks based on dynamic visual search (the Find-the-Chase task) and a new type of interactive display (the Don't-Get-Caught! task).
长期以来，心理学家一直着迷于对生命感知的研究——即便是简单的移动形状，也可能看起来像是在进行有生命的、有意图的和目标导向的运动。在此，我们报告了几种关于一种特别显著的生命感知形式的新型研究：追逐，即一个形状（“狼”）追逐另一个形状（“羊”）。我们首先展示了两种新的感知追逐的线索——追逐微妙度（狼偏离完美“热追踪”式追逐的程度）和方向性（形状是否以及如何“面对面”）。然后，我们利用这些线索来展示如何评估此类感知的客观准确性，并区分对追逐的即时感知与那些更微妙（但仍然真实）的“跟踪”类型，这些跟踪类型不容易被察觉。我们还报告了几个方法上的进展。先前关于生命感知的研究面临两个主要挑战：（a）难以精确地定量测量生命感知；（b）任务要求使得难以区分感知与关于生命的更高级别的推断。我们展示了如何通过基于动态视觉搜索的任务（“找到追逐”任务）和一种新型交互式显示（“别被抓住！”任务）来应对这些挑战，至少在我们关于感知追逐的案例研究中是这样。
