Data from: Multi-level processing of emotions in life motion signals revealed through pupil responses

The ability to intuitively and reflexively interpret emotions through the motion pattern of living entities is essential for social interactions and human survival. Here we demonstrated that emotional information conveyed by point-light biological motion (BM) triggered automatic physiological responses as reflected in pupil size. A total of 120 participants (44 males, 76 females) ranging from 18 to 29 years old (M ± SD = 23.1 ± 2.5) were recruited. They were all naïve to the purpose of the experiments. Participants were seated at a viewing distance of 60 cm to the computer screen with their heads on a chinrest to minimize their head movements. Their pupil size and eye position of the left eye were recorded using a video-based iView X Hi-Speed system (SMI, Berlin, Germany) at 500 Hz. At the end of all experiments, participants were required to complete the 50-point Autism-spectrum Questionnaire (AQ), which measured the degree of autistic traits in the normal population (Baron-Cohen et al., 2001).