Neurocs seminar: Seeing minds in motion: How is the perception of animacy connected to the rest of the mind?
28-02-2019 - 13:00
Seminar and meetings
The goal of vision science is to figure out how we see. But perhaps an even more foundational question is: What do we see? Beyondseemingly simple features such as color and shape, recent work suggests that visual processing also extracts properties that are more intuitively associated with higher-level thought – such as the animacy and intentionality. Psychologists have long marveled at demonstrations in which simple moving shapes look alive and goal-directed (e.g. when they appear to be ‘chasing’ each other, or ‘trying’ to satisfy certain goals).However, this phenomenon has often been treated as an isolated curiosity, without a clear relationship to the rest of the mind. In this talk, I will present evidence that the perception of animacy and intentionality is connected to other perceptual and cognitive processes in far richer ways than have been previously imagined – interacting with and supporting several phenomena of perceived eye gaze, and profoundly influencing nearly all aspects of cognitive processing, including goal-directed behavior, memory, attention, and visual awareness. This work collectively shows how processes of social perception can provide a rich foundation for higher-level thought and behavior.
Ben Van Buren
KULeuven
Place Cardinal Mercier, 10
Salle du Conseil (room A224), Faculté de Psychologie et des Sciences de l'Education
Floor number :2
Louvain-la-Neuve