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Abstract:
Faces often move in complex, non-rigid ways (talking or laughing). Do such motion patterns influence our perception of facial identity? To explore this issue we animated 3D head models using motion sequences captured from different human actors. During an incidental learning phase, observers were exposed to FACE A moving with MOTION A and FACE B moving with MOTION B. Test stimuli consisted of spatially morphed heads (no texture) ranging in 10\% steps
from FACE A to FACE B. The morphs were animated using either MOTION A or MOTION B. Observers were instructed to categorize each test stimuli as either FACE A or FACE B. Motion biased the perception of identity across most levels of the morph sequence, with the strongest bias occurring around the perceptual midpoint. These results suggest that facial motion can play an important role in determining facial identity, particularly when structural information is ambiguous.
