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Abstract:
Visual recognition of object, faces, and animals is done with ease and speed (eg Thorpe et al, 1996 Nature 381 520 - 522). Similarly important for human life is the visual recognition of social interactions (the physical interaction of an individual with others). Little is known about social interaction recognition and how it compares to visual object recognition. One prediction is that social interaction recognition, unlike object recognition, requires the recognition of how objects/humans are related to each other (eg, is the arm reached out for hitting or hand shaking?) in addition to the recognition of individual objects/humans. Hence, the visual recognition of social interactions might take longer. Here we compared the time course of visual object and social interaction recognition. We measured the presentation time thresholds to recognise static images depicting objects or social interactions with 80 certainty. We found the same presentation time thresholds for object and social interaction recognition. We conclude that social interaction recognition is as fast as object recognition.
