Using movement and intentions to understand human activity. Zacks, J. M., Kumar, S., Abrams, R. A, & Mehta, R. Cognition, 112(2):201-16, 2009.
doi  abstract   bibtex   
During perception, people segment continuous activity into discrete events. They do so in part by monitoring changes in features of an ongoing activity. Characterizing these features is important for theories of event perception and may be helpful for designing information systems. The three experiments reported here asked whether the body movements of an actor predict when viewers will perceive event boundaries. Body movements were recorded using a magnetic motion tracking system and compared with viewers' segmentation of his activity into events. Changes in movement features were strongly associated with segmentation. This was more true for fine-grained than for coarse-grained boundaries, and was strengthened when the stimulus displays were reduced from live-action movies to simplified animations. These results suggest that movement variables play an important role in the process of segmenting activity into meaningful events, and that the influence of movement on segmentation depends on the availability of other information sources.
@Article{Zacks2009,
  author   = {J. M. Zacks and Shawn Kumar and Richard A Abrams and Ritesh Mehta},
  journal  = {Cognition},
  title    = {Using movement and intentions to understand human activity.},
  year     = {2009},
  number   = {2},
  pages    = {201-16},
  volume   = {112},
  abstract = {During perception, people segment continuous activity into discrete
	events. They do so in part by monitoring changes in features of an
	ongoing activity. Characterizing these features is important for
	theories of event perception and may be helpful for designing information
	systems. The three experiments reported here asked whether the body
	movements of an actor predict when viewers will perceive event boundaries.
	Body movements were recorded using a magnetic motion tracking system
	and compared with viewers' segmentation of his activity into events.
	Changes in movement features were strongly associated with segmentation.
	This was more true for fine-grained than for coarse-grained boundaries,
	and was strengthened when the stimulus displays were reduced from
	live-action movies to simplified animations. These results suggest
	that movement variables play an important role in the process of
	segmenting activity into meaningful events, and that the influence
	of movement on segmentation depends on the availability of other
	information sources.},
  doi      = {10.1016/j.cognition.2009.03.007},
  keywords = {Adolescent, Female, Functional Laterality, Humans, Male, Motion Pictures as Topic, Motor Activity, Movement, Perception, Set (Psychology), Young Adult, 19497569},
}

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