Perceptual causality and animacy
Abstract
Certain simple visual displays consisting of moving 2-D geometric shapes can give rise to percepts with high-level properties such as causality and animacy. This article reviews recent research on such phenomena, which began with the classic work of Michotte and of Heider and Simmel. The importance of such phenomena stems in part from the fact that these interpretations seem to be largely perceptual in nature - to be fairly fast, automatic, irresistible and highly stimulus driven - despite the fact that they involve impressions typically associated with higher-level cognitive processing. This research suggests that just as the visual system works to recover the physical structure of the world by inferring properties such as 3-D shape, so too does it work to recover the causal and social structure of the world by inferring properties such as causality and animacy.
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ToM has a largely automatic and perceptual component in addition to cognitive components emerging later in development.
“has a largely automatic and perceptual component in addition to cognitive components emerging later in development (Scholl and Tremoulet 2000)”
From Body and Mind in Early China: An Integrated Humanities–Science Approach (2013) · cites this paper as Scholl and Tremoulet 2000
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Self-citation
- Authors
- Scholl, B. J., & Tremoulet, P. D.
- Affiliations
- Harvard University (US)
- Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (US)
- Venue
- Trends in Cognitive Sciences
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2000-08
- Volume
- 4
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 299-309
- ISSN
- 1364-6613 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2123393961
- Cited by
- 1,104
- References
- 4
- Citations by year
- 2026: 35 · 2025: 36 · 2024: 39 · 2023: 43 · 2022: 43 · 2021: 46 · 2020: 47 · 2019: 55 · 2018: 47 · 2017: 56 · 2016: 62 · 2015: 64 · 2014: 46 · 2013: 59 · 2012: 65
- FWCI
- 2.03
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Trends in Cognitive Sciences (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Action Observation and Synchronization
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
- Keywords
- animacy perception, Michotte effect, causal inference, visual perception
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