Predicting where a ball will land: from thrower's body language to ball's motion.

Abstract

To predict where a thrown ball will land, an observer may use visual information about its trajectory. However, in addition, the thrower's body language (i.e., body movement and facial expression) may contain useful information that could be used by the observer to understand intention and emotional state. Here, we investigated how observers estimated a ball's landing point thrown by a virtual agent with different amounts of information from body language. In addition, occlusion time was varied to examine how it potentiates the use of body-language information. Results showed that body movement and facial expression carry information about thrower's effort. However, once the ball has left the thrower's hand, advance information on facial expression does contribute to judgments only if consistent with the amplitude of the throw. Moreover, as the occlusion time increases, a stronger influence of the body movement is observed for estimating the landing point. The overriding effect of ball's trajectory availability over body language is discussed.