ON THE CONTRIBUTION OF KINEMATIC AND SOCIAL CUES TO THE PERCEPTION OF MOVEMENT VIGOR

In Exp.1, full-body virtual avatars representing either a young or an older adult executed reaching movements identical to those shown in a point-light control condition. Thirty participants judged whether each movement appeared fast or slow, with separate groups evaluating each avatar. Point-light were consistently judged faster than avatar stimuli, whereas avatar age had no effect. This result suggests that increased visual realism, rather than age stereotypes (as tested here), altered vigor perception.
We therefore hypothesized that differences in available kinematic information, not social cues, accounted for the observed effects. Exp.2 tested this hypothesis by adding the condition of an arm modeled using sticks and spheres, providing kinematic richness comparable to avatars while conveying no age information. Twenty-seven participants judged movements displayed as point-light figures, arm models, and young avatars. Again, movements presented as point-light were consistently perceived as faster than those shown as arm models or avatars, which did not differ from each other.
Across all stimulus types, the vigor law held true. Together, these findings indicate that vigor perception primarily relies on integrated kinematic information rather than on social context.