Parovel Giulia
Department of Social, Political and Cognitive Sciences, University of Siena, Siena, Italy.
Front Psychol. 2023 Jun 2;14:1167809. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1167809. eCollection 2023.
Since the seminal work of Heider and Simmel, and Michotte's research, many studies have shown that, under appropriate conditions, displays of simple geometric shapes elicit rich and vivid impressions of animacy and intentionality. The main purpose of this review is to emphasize the close relationship between kinematics and perceived animacy by showing which specific motion cues and spatiotemporal patterns automatically trigger visual perceptions of animacy and intentionality. The animacy phenomenon has been demonstrated to be rather fast, automatic, irresistible, and highly stimulus-driven. Moreover, there is growing evidence that animacy attributions, although usually associated with higher-level cognition and long-term memory, may reflect highly specialized visual processes that have evolved to support adaptive behaviors critical for survival. The hypothesis of a life-detector hardwired in the perceptual system is also supported by recent studies in early development and animal cognition, as well as by the issue of the "irresistibility" criterion, i.e., the persistence of animacy perception in adulthood even in the face of conflicting background knowledge. Finally, further support for the hypothesis that animacy is processed in the earliest stages of vision comes from recent experimental evidence on the interaction of animacy with other visual processes, such as visuomotor performance, visual memory, and speed estimation. Summarizing, the ability to detect animacy in all its nuances may be related to the visual system's sensitivity to those changes in kinematics - considered as a multifactorial relational system - that are associated with the presence of living beings, as opposed to the natural, inert behavior of physically constrained, form-invariant objects, or even mutually independent moving agents. This broad predisposition would allow the observer not only to identify the presence of animates and to distinguish them from inanimate, but also to quickly grasp their psychological, emotional, and social characteristics.
自海德和西梅尔的开创性研究以及米肖特的研究以来，许多研究表明，在适当条件下，简单几何形状的展示会引发对生动性和意向性的丰富而生动的印象。本综述的主要目的是通过展示哪些特定的运动线索和时空模式会自动触发对生动性和意向性的视觉感知，来强调运动学与感知到的生动性之间的密切关系。生动性现象已被证明相当迅速、自动、不可抗拒且高度受刺激驱动。此外，越来越多的证据表明，对生动性的归因虽然通常与高级认知和长期记忆相关，但可能反映了高度专业化的视觉过程，这些过程已经进化以支持对生存至关重要的适应性行为。感知系统中硬连线的生命探测器假说也得到了早期发育和动物认知方面的最新研究以及“不可抗拒性”标准问题的支持，即即使面对相互矛盾的背景知识，成年期对生动性的感知仍然持续存在。最后，关于生动性与其他视觉过程（如视觉运动表现、视觉记忆和速度估计）相互作用的最新实验证据，进一步支持了生动性在视觉最早阶段就被处理的假说。总之，检测生动性所有细微差别的能力可能与视觉系统对运动学变化（被视为一个多因素关系系统）的敏感性有关，这些变化与生物的存在相关，与物理上受限、形状不变的物体甚至相互独立的移动主体的自然、惰性行为形成对比。这种广泛的倾向不仅能让观察者识别有生命物体的存在并将它们与无生命物体区分开来，还能让观察者迅速掌握它们的心理、情感和社会特征。
