Abstract
What is the role of motion in person recognition? Dynamic identity signatures (DIS), or unique idiosyncratic movements of different individuals, have so far been examined in the context of facial motion in search of their possible contribution to face recognition. In particular, it has been suggested that DIS may contribute mainly in familiar person recognition (O'Toole, Roark, & Abdi, 2002). However, despite the fact that studies have shown that following exposure to motion, the body improved person recognition beyond the face (O'Toole et al., 2011; Simhi & Yovel, 2015), the specific role of DIS in familiar and unfamiliar whole person recognition has not been examined so far. Furthermore, in the context of whole person recognition the role of DIS, and their advantage over static information, has been examined mainly in point-light displays, which differ substantially from natural viewing conditions. In a set of experiments we therefore assessed the role of DIS in unfamiliar and familiar person recognition using naturalistic videos. To assess the role of DIS in unfamiliar person recognition, we used a sequential matching task in which participants study videos of the whole person and perform person recognition from either videos or still images. We found that DIS did not contribute to unfamiliar person recognition beyond static images of the whole person. We further examined the role of DIS after undergoing extensive familiarization with different dynamic identities. We found that after familiarization recognition from videos was better than recognition from still images alone indicating that while DIS may not usually contribute to unfamiliar person recognition they can contribute to whole person recognition of familiar people. These findings highlight the importance of considering the role of motion in whole person recognition and in particular the role of motion in familiar person recognition.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2016