Eyes on Biological Motion

The social motivation theory proposes that individuals naturally orient their attention to the social world. Here, we used complementary eye tracking measures to investigate how social motion cues affect attention and arousal. Specifically, we examined whether viewing the human body moving naturally versus mechanically leads to greater attentional engagement and changes in autonomic arousal (as assessed by pupil size measures). This question is based on previous research documenting the rewarding value of biological motion to typically developed individuals. Participants completed an attentional disengagement task in two independent experiments, while pupillary responses were recorded. We found that natural, human-like motion produced greater increases in attention and arousal than mechanical motion, whether the moving agent was human or not. These findings contribute an important piece to our understanding of social motivation by demonstrating that human motion is a key social stimulus that engages visual attention and induces autonomic arousal in the viewer.

社会动机理论提出，个体天生会将注意力导向社会世界。在本研究中，我们采用互补的眼动追踪方法，探讨社会运动线索如何影响注意力和唤醒水平。具体而言，我们考察了观察人体自然运动与机械运动是否会导致更高的注意力参与度和自主神经唤醒水平的改变（通过瞳孔大小测量评估）。这一问题基于先前研究，记录了生物运动对正常发展个体具有奖赏价值的事实。参与者完成了两项独立的注意力分散任务，同时记录瞳孔反应。我们发现，无论是移动主体是人还是非人，自然、类似人类的运动都比机械运动产生了更大的注意力和唤醒水平的提升。这些发现为理解社会动机提供了重要的一环，证明了人类运动是一种关键的社会刺激，能够激发视觉注意力并引起观众的自主神经唤醒。