Perceptual Animacy
\emph{perceptual animacy},
the detection by broadly perceptual processes of animate objects and their targets.
Gao et al, 2009 figure 2
Evidence for the existence of perceptual animacy comes from a variety of studies
where adults are given a simple visual task such as identifying which circle is the ‘wolf’
and which the ‘sheep’, or, in another experiment, moving the sheep around in order to
avoid being caught by the wolf.
It is also possible to examine how having a sheep and a wolf affects how attention is allocated by
measuring how well participants can detect probes placed on different shapes.
The literature on perceptual animacy mostly confounds it with goal tracking.
But there are two key differences.
First, perceptual animacy is a broadly
perceptual phenomenon.
Second,
the perceptual detection of animacy is clearly distinct from goal tracking
for it involves detecting relations between objects in motion rather than
outcomes to which actions are directed.
Relatedly, it does not involve sensitivity to the type of action.
And the perceptual detection of animacy appears to depend on simple cues
and heuristics and is unlikely to be correctly described by the
Teleological Stance.
So perceptual animacy does not involve tracking goals to which an action is
directed: it is a matter of tracking objects to which animate movements are
directed.
Gao et al, 2009 figure 3b
\emph{{perceptual animacy}},
the detection by broadly perceptual processes of animate objects and their targets.
To illustrate, consider a groundbreaking experiment by \citet[experiment 1]{gao:2009_psychophysics}.
Adults were shown a display which contained some moving circles.
In some cases the circles moved independently of each other, but in other cases there was a ‘wolf’
which chased a ‘sheep’ with varying degrees of subtlety.
The adults’ task was simply to detect the presence of a wolf.
\citeauthor{gao:2009_psychophysics} established that adults can do this providing the chasing is not too subtle.
In further experiments, they also showed that adults’ abilities to perceptually detect chasing
depend on several cues including whether the chaser ‘faces’ its target (‘directionality’) and how
directly the chaser approaches its target (‘subtlety’).
The detection of animacy appears to be a broadly perceptual phenomena since it depends on areas of
the brain associated with vision and influences how perceptual attention is allocated
\citep{scholl:2013_perceiving} irrespective of your beliefs and intentions
\citep{buren:2016_automaticity}.
Gao et al, 2009 figures 3b, 4a
To illustrate, we have to recognise that, in adults,
there are multiple processes
involved in tracking actions, which are differently affected by changes in
context, and which probably have different affects on different kinds of responses to
observed and anticipated actions.
Here is a rough guess about how things look IN ADULTS.
what’s already in infants ...
Gao et al, 2009 figure 3b; Csibra et al 2003, figure 6
further complication: associative learning for sequencing