Getting the gist of events: recognition of two-participant actions from brief displays

Unlike rapid scene and object recognition from brief displays, little is known about recognition of event categories and event roles from minimal visual information. In 3 experiments, we displayed naturalistic photographs of a wide range of 2-participant event scenes for 37 ms and 73 ms followed by a mask, and found that event categories (the event gist; e.g., "kicking," "pushing") and event roles (i.e., Agent and Patient) can be recognized rapidly, even with various actor pairs and backgrounds. Norming ratings from a subsequent experiment revealed that certain physical features (e.g., outstretched extremities) that correlate with Agent-hood could have contributed to rapid role recognition. In a final experiment, using identical twin actors, we then varied these features in 2 sets of stimuli, in which Patients had Agent-like features or not. Subjects recognized the roles of event participants less accurately when Patients possessed Agent-like features, with this difference being eliminated with 2-s durations. Thus, given minimal visual input, typical Agent-like physical features are used in role recognition, but with sufficient input from multiple fixations, people categorically determine the relationship between event participants.