Upside-down Presentation of the Johansson Moving Light-Spot Pattern

Abstract

In a film produced by Johansson, a group of moving spots, corresponding to lights attached to the main joints of a walker or a runner, gives instantly a vivid impression of a person walking or running. Even when this film was inverted and run backward, some sort of human movement was still perceived. It was perceived more frequently as an upright image of a person moving forward in a very strange manner than as an inverted image of a person moving backward. Such strangeness seemed to arise from the fact that the actor's arms were perceived as legs and vice versa. The phase relations typical of the Johansson pattern are therefore still present when the film is inverted and run backward, leading to the perception of biological motions though these motions are very strange.