Four fundamental dimensions underlie the perception of human actions.

We evaluate the actions of other individuals based upon a variety of movements that reveal critical information to guide decision making and behavioural responses. These signals convey a range of information about the actor, including their goals, intentions and internal mental states. Although progress has been made to identify cortical regions involved in action processing, the organising principles underlying our representation of actions still remains unclear.

Rapid detection of social interactions is the result of domain general attentional processes.

Using visual search displays of interacting and non-interacting pairs, it has been demonstrated that detection of social interactions is facilitated. For example, two people facing each other are found faster than two people with their backs turned: an effect that may reflect social binding. However, recent work has shown the same effects with non-social arrow stimuli, where towards facing arrows are detected faster than away facing arrows.

Young children learn first impressions of faces through social referencing.

Previous research has demonstrated that the tendency to form first impressions from facial appearance emerges early in development. We examined whether social referencing is one route through which these consistent first impressions are acquired. In Study 1, we show that 5- to 7-year-old children are more likely to choose a target face previously associated with positive non-verbal signals as more trustworthy than a face previously associated with negative non-verbal signals.

Exploring patterns of ongoing thought under naturalistic and conventional task-based conditions.

Previous research suggests that patterns of ongoing thought are heterogeneous, varying across situations and individuals. The current study investigated the influence of multiple tasks and affective style on ongoing patterns of thought. We used 9 different tasks and measured ongoing thought using multidimensional experience sampling.

Searching for people: Non-facing distractor pairs hinder the visual search of social scenes more than facing distractor pairs.

There is growing interest in the visual and attentional processes recruited when human observers view social scenes containing multiple people. Findings from visual search paradigms have helped shape this emerging literature. Previous research has established that, when hidden amongst pairs of individuals facing in the same direction (leftwards or rightwards), pairs of individuals arranged front-to-front are found faster than pairs of individuals arranged back-to-back.

Three minutes to change preferences: perceptual fluency and response inhibition.

Perceptual fluency and response inhibition are well-established techniques to unobtrusively manipulate preference: objects are devalued following association with disfluency or inhibition. These approaches to preference change are extensively studied individually, but there is less research examining the impact of combining the two techniques in a single intervention. In short (3 min) game-like tasks, we examine the preference and memory effects of perceptual fluency and inhibition individually, and then the cumulative effects of combining the two techniques.

Predictive person models elicit motor biases: The face-inhibition effect revisited.

Using an established paradigm, we tested whether people derive motoric predictions about an actor's forthcoming actions from prior knowledge about them and the context in which they are seen. In two experiments, participants identified famous tennis and soccer players using either hand or foot responses. Athletes were shown either carrying out or not carrying out their associated actions (swinging, kicking), either in the context where these actions are typically seen (tennis court, soccer Pitch) or outside these contexts (beach, awards ceremony).

Competing for affection: Perceptual fluency and ambiguity solution.

Human perceptual processes are highly efficient and rapidly extract information to enable fast and accurate responses. The fluency of these processes is reinforcing, meaning that easy-to-perceive objects are liked more as a result of misattribution of the reinforcement affect to the object identity. However, some critical processes are disfluent, yet their completion can be reinforcing leading to object preference through a different route.

Motion fluency and object preference: Robust perceptual but fragile memory effects.

In 8 experiments, we investigated motion fluency effects on object preference. In each experiment, distinct objects were repeatedly seen moving either fluently (with a smooth and predictable motion) or disfluently (with sudden and unpredictable direction changes) in a task where participants were required to respond to occasional brief changes in object appearance. Results show that (a) fluent objects are preferred over disfluent objects when ratings follow a moving presentation, (b) there is some evidence that object-motion associations can be learned with repeated exposures, (c) sufficiently potent motions can yield preference for fluent objects after a single viewing, and (d) learned associations do not transfer to situations where ratings follow a stationary presentation, even after deep levels of encoding.

Preference for illusory contours: Beyond object symmetry, familiarity, and nameability.

It has previously been reported that individuals prefer figures from which they can extract shapes via illusory contours (Kanisza figures) over figures in which this is not possible. However, based on the past research in this area, it is not possible to distinguish the influence of illusory contour perception from other factors such as the symmetry, familiarity, prototypicality, and nameability of the perceived shape. Here, we investigate the influence of illusory contours in the absence of these confounding variables by measuring participants' aesthetic/liking ratings for symmetric Kanisza figures and for unfamiliar and asymmetric Kanisza figures.

Incidental retrieval of prior emotion mimicry.

When observing emotional expressions, similar sensorimotor states are activated in the observer, often resulting in physical mimicry. For example, when observing a smile, the zygomaticus muscles associated with smiling are activated in the observer, and when observing a frown, the corrugator brow muscles. We show that the consistency of an individual's facial emotion, whether they always frown or smile, can be encoded into memory.

Memory for incidentally perceived social cues: Effects on person judgment.

Dynamic face cues can be very salient, as when observing sudden shifts of gaze to a new location, or a change of expression from happy to angry. These highly salient social cues influence judgments of another person during the course of an interaction. However, other dynamic cues, such as pupil dilation, are much more subtle, affecting judgments of another person even without awareness.

Ownership Status Influences the Degree of Joint Facilitatory Behavior.

When engaging in joint activities, humans tend to sacrifice some of their own sensorimotor comfort and efficiency to facilitate a partner's performance. In the two experiments reported here, we investigated whether ownership-a socioculturally based nonphysical feature ascribed to objects-influenced facilitatory motor behavior in joint action. Participants passed mugs that differed in ownership status across a table to a partner.