GLOBAL PROCESSING OF BIOLOGICAL MOTIONS

The structure of the human form is quickly and unequivocably recognize d from 10 to 13 points of light moving as if attached to the major joi nts and head of a person walking. Recent psychophysical and computatio nal models of this process suggest that these displays are organized b y low-level processing constraints that delimit the pair-wise connecti ons of the point lights. In the current research, these low-level cons traints were rendered uninformative by a masking paradigm. The results from four experiments converged to show that the perception of struct ure in a point-light walker display does not require the prior detecti on of individual features or local relations.