Citation

Balk SA, Tyrrell RA, Brooks JO, Carpenter TL. Perception 2008; 37(8): 1276-1284.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, 418 Brackett Hall, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634-1355, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, SAGE Publications)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

18853562

Abstract

Exploring how biological motion can make pedestrians more conspicuous to drivers at night, one-hundred-and-twenty participants were driven along an open-road route at night and pressed a button whenever they recognized that a pedestrian was present. A test pedestrian wearing black clothing alone or with 302 cm2 of retroreflective markings in one of four configurations either stood still or walked in place on an unilluminated sidewalk. Participants' response distances were maximal for the full biological-motion configuration and remained surprisingly long when convenient subsets of reflective markers were positioned on the pedestrian's ankles and wrists. When the pedestrian wore a reflective vest, the responses were no better than when he wore no reflective markings. The biological-motion advantage actually results from interacting form-perception and motion-perception mechanisms. These results confirm that basic perceptual phenomena-observers' sensitivity to human form and motion can be harnessed to reduce an important problem of traffic safety.

Language: en