movement perception

▪ process

Introduction

      process through which humans and other animals orient themselves to their own or others' physical movements. Most animals, including humans, move in search of food that itself often moves; they move to avoid predators and to mate. Animals must perceive their own movements to balance themselves and to move effectively; without such perceptual functions the chances for survival would be sharply reduced.

Visual cues to movement

      The eye (eye, human) is by far the most effective organ for sensing movement. Some animals are especially sensitive to visual stimuli that move in specific ways. For instance, electrical patterns from the eye of a frog show that some elements in the organ respond only when the stimulus is about the size of a fly moving in the insect's range of speed. Generally the eyes of lower animals seem to respond selectively to what is of importance to survival. In these animals the eye's retina does much of the visual processing. This is an economical arrangement since the animal tends to respond only to essential stimuli, the brain having little to do but relay signals to the motor system. It is an inflexible mechanism, however; higher animals process visual information in more elaborate ways, the brain being more heavily involved. Thus, some cells in the visual area of the cat's brain respond only to moving stimuli, sets of movement-detector cells functioning specifically for each direction across the field of view. Features of human visual experience also suggest that movement detectors exist in the human brain.

      Each retina in most higher animals has a central (foveal) zone for detailed colour and pattern vision and a surrounding peripheral zone that effectively is sensitive only to the grosser features of the outer visual field. The peripheral retina is especially sensitive to movement (often a signal of danger), which induces a reflex turning of the eyes to project the image on the fovea and permit the moving object to be recognized.

Visual stability

      Mechanisms have evolved that yield stable, clear visual input despite swaying and other blurring factors. In a reflex mechanism called optokinetic nystagmus, the eyes pursue a moving scene to keep the image stationary on the retina. When they can move no farther, they snap back and pursue the scene again in a to-and-fro alternation of slow pursuit and quick return. These eye movements are readily observed in people who are looking at a moving pattern of stripes or turning their heads, this response being inhibited only when something stationary is visually fixated.

      Similar nystagmic movements are triggered by impulses arising in the inner ear when the head moves. These persist even when the eyes are closed and may be felt by pressing the eyelids lightly as one rotates the whole body.

      In a related stabilizing activity the eyes scan in quick jerks (saccades (saccade)) with short fixations; e.g., in reading. Normally the eyes cannot move steadily over a stationary scene but make a series of stationary images (like still photographs); visual function tends to be suppressed when there is saccadic blurring. Yet the eyes can follow a steadily moving object smoothly.

      When one looks from one point to another, movements of the retinal image are the same as those produced by a moving scene on a stationary eye. It might be thought that the sensory structures found in the eye muscles would provide the cues for judging whether it is the eye or the scene that has moved. Yet we see the scene as stationary only when we move our eyes voluntarily and not when they are moved passively by the finger. This suggests that motor-nerve signals inform us whether our eyes are moving, rather than the sensory structures in the eye muscles. When the eye is moved by pushing it with the finger there is no normal motor discharge to inform the brain, and changes in retinal image are perceived as movement of the scene. Indeed, people with paralyzed eye muscles experience the scene as moving when they try to move their eyes. When the motor discharge thus generated is not accompanied by the expected image motion, the person falsely perceives the scene and the eye to be moving together.

Relative visual movement

      A visual field containing familiar objects provides a stable framework against which relative motion may be judged. People often report that an isolated point of light in a dark room is moving when it is not; the experience is known as autokinetic (autokinetic effect) movement. It was observed in 1799 by Alexander von Humboldt (Humboldt, Alexander von) while he was watching a star through a telescope, and he attributed it to movement of the star itself. Not until about 60 years later was the effect shown to be subjective, apparently arising from instability in the sense of eye position without a visual frame of reference.

      Similarly, if a small object is presented in a frame with nothing else in view, movement usually is attributed to the object even when only the frame moves. This induced movement effect reflects our tendency to use the larger surround as a stable frame of reference. Recall the illusion that your train is moving when it is really the moving train alongside that, seen through the window, is falsely accepted as the frame of reference.

      People cannot perceive very slow movement; below a minimum speed (about that of the minute hand on a watch) movements become imperceptible and can only be inferred (as in remembering the previous position of the hour hand). At high speeds, one perceives a blurred streak rather than a definite object in motion.

Movement aftereffect

      When a parade is interrupted after some minutes, the pavement may seem to move in the opposite direction to the marchers who have passed. Phenomena similar to this movement aftereffect occur in other senses. For instance, after disembarking, a sailor feels the land to be rolling like a ship as the result of kinesthetic and vestibular aftereffects. The visual movement aftereffect probably arises when movement detectors in the brain that respond to the original direction of motion become fatigued, leaving predominant those detectors that respond to contrary movement.

Apparent movement

      Motion-picture film (motion-picture technology) is a strip of discrete, still pictures but produces the visual impression of continuous movement. Stationary light bulbs coming on one after the other over the theatre entrance also produce an impression of steady movement. In part, such effects of apparent movement (called the visual phi phenomenon) depend on persistence of vision: visual response outlasts a stimulus by a fraction of a second. When the interval between successive flashes of a stationary light is less than this visual-persistence time, the flicker will appear to fuse into a continuous light. The flicker frequency at which this occurs is called the perceiver's flicker-fusion frequency (or critical flicker frequency) and represents the temporal resolving power of his visual system at the time. Another process on which apparent movement depends is a tendency (called visual closure or phi) to fill in the spaces between adjacent visual objects. This means that the movement detectors of the visual system are triggered as effectively by a closely spaced pair of lights alternately going on and off as by a single light moving back and forth. It would seem that two aspects of visual function (flicker fusion and phi) make the motion-picture industry possible.

Stroboscopic effect

      When a rotating electric fan is illuminated by a flashing light source (called a stroboscope) so that a flash arrives whenever a fan blade passes a fixed position, the blades will seem to stand still. This is a useful way of observing fast-moving objects such as machinery or insect wings. If the flashes occur less frequently, the object will seem to move slowly in its actual direction; when the flashes arrive more frequently, the object will seem to move backward, as stagecoach wheels may do in the cinema.

Visual movement in depth

      An object moving directly away from an observer provides fewer visual cues of movement than it would be moving across the field of view. However, changes in retinal-image size are produced that give a clue to its movement. Thus a stationary, but shrinking, luminous object in the dark is seen as if it were receding. Other clues to movement in depth are changes in the convergence angle of the two eyes, in the focussing mechanism, and in the haziness and brightness of the object.

Nonvisual cues

Auditory

      Sound waves travel well in water, and fish are accordingly able to rely heavily on acoustic cues to detect moving objects. Land animals, although typically more visually oriented, also make some use of such cues, including changes in intensity (loudness) and small differences in the time at which the wave reaches each ear. Some animals (e.g., rabbit, horse) have mobile external ears that track moving sound sources. Bats vocalize high-frequency waves and are able to detect objects by sonic reflection (a technique similar to sonar).

Kinesthetic

      Kinesthesis here refers to experiences that arise during movement from sense organs in the membranes lining the joints and from the sense of effort in voluntary movement; receptors in muscles seem to have little role in the perception of bodily movements. Depending on speed of motion and the joint involved, blindfolded people can detect a passive joint movement as small as a quarter of a degree. People vary widely in the accuracy with which they can actively produce movement of a given extent; this ability also varies with direction of movement and the opposing friction, mass, and springiness.

      Kinesthetic perception may persist for a limb that has been amputated, giving rise to a hallucinatory experience known as the phantom limb (phantom limb syndrome). The patient may experience vividly the “movement” of the absent part; a recent amputee may attempt to stand on his missing leg or to grasp with his missing hand.

Vestibular system

      Vestibular structures, enclosed in a fluid-filled cavity in the region of each inner ear (ear, human), include the utricle, a small sac containing minute sensitive hairs associated with tiny sandlike granules called otoliths. The utricle functions as a linear accelerometer. When the head tilts relative to gravity or is accelerated, the relatively dense otoliths deflect the hair cells and nerve impulses are transmitted to the brain. At constant velocity the otoliths become stable, stimulation ceases, and a person must rely on other cues (e.g., by observing the passing scene) to detect his motion.

      Vestibular structures for each ear also include three fluid-filled semicircular canals, each in a different plane. Each canal has a swelling (ampulla) that contains the cupula, a cluster of sensitive hairs embedded in a jellylike mound. As the head moves in the plane of a given canal, motions of the fluid deflect the cupula to produce nerve impulses. These travel through the brainstem to other brain and spinal centres that mediate equilibrium or balance and that generate nystagmic eye movements.

      Taken together, the semicircular canals serve as a rotary accelerometer. If a person is rotated at constant velocity and then is suddenly stopped, the cupula is redeflected to give a feeling of rotation in the opposite direction; this also gives rise to dizziness and postrotational nystagmus. Dancers and skaters learn to overcome such effects by concentrating on some fixed, visible object; with their eyes closed they are as likely to fall as anyone.

      Overstimulation of the vestibular system (e.g., on a ship or airplane) may induce motion sickness. A person with vestibular function totally destroyed is not subject to motion sickness; but if the vestibular mechanism is impaired only on one side, each movement of the head can be nauseating. Such a patient takes a long time to compensate for this imbalance.

      In outer space there is no gravitation to mediate feelings of up or down, although these still may arise from visual cues. The utricles and vestibular canals still respond to movements of the head, however, and serve orientation within the spacecraft.

Ian P. Howard

Additional Reading

An excellent general text for undergraduates is Robert Sekuler and Randolph Blake, Perception, 3rd ed. (1994), focusing on perception through the senses. Irvin Rock, An Introduction to Perception (1975), is a standard introductory text for experimental psychology students. Also of interest is Shimon Ullman, The Interpretation of Visual Motion (1979), an original and accessible account of how we connect successive views of a moving object. More advanced reading is presented in James E. Cutting, Perception with an Eye for Motion (1986).Louis Jolyon West Ed.

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