Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2018

Department

Psychology

Abstract

We recorded head motion with one wireless marker attached to the back of the head during quiet stance as participants visually inspected a sloped ramp in order to perceive whether they might be able to stand on the surface. Participants responded with "yes" or "no" without attempting to stand on the ramp. As has been found in dynamic touch (Palatinus, Kelty-Stephen, Kinsella-Shaw, Carello, & Turvey, 2014), we hypothesized that multiscale fluctuation patterns in bodily movement during visual observation would predict perceptual judgments. Mixed-effects logistic regression predicted binary affordance judgments as a function of geographical slant angle, head-motion standar deviation, and multifractal spectrum width (Ihlen, 2012). Multifractal spectrum width was the strongest predictor of affordance judgments. Specifically, increased spectrum width predicted decreased odds of a "yes" answer. Interestingly, standard deviation was not a significant predictor, reinforcing our prediction that traditional measures of variability fail to account for what fractal measures of multiscale interactions can predict about information pickup in perception-action systems.

Publication Title

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance

Volume

44

Issue

6

First Page

836

Last Page

841

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