Can Deaf People See People Better?: Perception of Biological Motion in Deaf and Hearing Participants Vina Nguyen*, Rebecca Weast, and Dennis Proffitt Department of Psychology, University of Virginia Distinguishable male and female differences (Johansson, 1973). Male: greater center of moment (ratio of sum of shoulder width and hip width) (Pollick, Kay, Heim, & Stringer, 2005) and shoulder to hip sway (Mather & Murdoch, 1994). Female: greater ratio between hip to shoulder sway (Troje et al., 2006). Introduction Results Hypothesis Methods Conclusions & Discussion No significant difference between deaf and hearing participants. Peripheral biological motion perception could be automatic processing. Male walkers more accurately identified. Response confidence seems to play a role. References Bavelier, D., Tomann, A., Hutton, C., Mitchell, T., Corina, D., Liu, G., & Neville, H. (2000). Visual Attention to the Periphery Is Enhanced in Congenitally Deaf Individuals. The Journal of Neuroscience, 20, 1-6. Dye, M. W. G., Hauser, P. C., & Bavelier, D. (2009). Is Visual Selective Attention in Deaf Individuals Enhanced or Deficient? The Case of the Useful Field of View. PLoS ONE, 4(5), e5640. doi: /journal.pone Johansson, G. (1973). Visual perception of biological motion and a model for its analysis. Perception & Psychophysics, 14(2), Mather, G., & Murdoch, L. (1994). Gender discrimination in biological motion displays based on dynamic cues. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 258, 273–279. Pollick, F. E., Kay, J. W., Heim, K., & Stringer, R. (2005). Gender recognition from point-light walkers. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 31, 1247–1265. Troje, N., Sadr, J., Geyer, H., & Nakayama, K. (2006). Adaptation aftereffects in the perception of gender from biological motion. Journal of Vision, 6(2), Deaf Participants will be more accurate at identifying the genders of point-light walkers peripherally. Does hearing status have an effect? No. Hearing Status on Accuracy: z=-0.75, p= Deaf Individuals were not able to identify the gender of point-light walkers with greater accuracy than their hearing counterparts. Main Effect of Response Confidence: Responses that were made with greater confidence were also more accurate z=-2.81, p= Hearing Status Accuracy Gender of Point-Light Walker ? Accuracy Main Effect of the Gender of the Walker: Male walkers were more successfully identified than female walkers z=7.56, p< Error Bars = 95% Confidence Intervals fMRI of MT/MST: greater brain activity in motion-sensitive areas of the brain in deaf individuals ( Bavelier et al., 2000). (Troje et al., 2006) Task: Fixate on box. Click when “A” appears. Walker appears in periphery. After 8 seconds, task ends and video disappears. *Corresponding Author Results cont. Procedure: Seated 29cm from the screen. Focus on one side (Central Target). Walkers on opposite side (Peripheral Target). Visual Angle: º 28 Videos: 4 Examples 24 Trials The Question: Can deaf individuals more accurately identify the gender of point-light walker presented in the periphery when compared with their hearing counterparts? Deaf participants more accurately identified a peripheral target in an attention task (compared with hearing counterparts) (Dye, Hauser, & Bavelier, 2009). Deafness Associated with Enhanced Peripheral Visual Attention: Biological Motion: Significant Interaction between Walker Gender and Confidence: When participants were more confident that the walker in the video was male, they are more likely to be correct. However, when participants are more confident that a video contains a female walker, they are less likely to respond correctly z=3.75, p<0.001.