What Will I Do Next? The Intention from Motion Experiment

In computer vision, video-based approaches have been widely explored for the early classification and the prediction of actions or activities. However, it remains unclear whether this modality (as compared to 3D kinematics) can still be reliable for the prediction of human intentions, defined as the overarching goal embedded in an action sequence. Since the same action can be performed with different intentions, this problem is more challenging but yet affordable as proved by quantitative cognitive studies which exploit the 3D kinematics acquired through motion capture systems. In this paper, we bridge cognitive and computer vision studies, by demonstrating the effectiveness of video-based approaches for the prediction of human intentions. Precisely, we propose Intention from Motion, a new paradigm where, without using any contextual information, we consider instantaneous grasping motor acts involving a bottle in order to forecast why the bottle itself has been reached (to pass it or to place in a box, or to pour or to drink the liquid inside). We process only the grasping onsets casting intention prediction as a classification framework. Leveraging on our multimodal acquisition (3D motion capture data and 2D optical videos), we compare the most commonly used 3D descriptors from cognitive studies with state-of-the-art video-based techniques. Since the two analyses achieve an equivalent performance, we demonstrate that computer vision tools are effective in capturing the kinematics and facing the cognitive problem of human intention prediction.Comment: 2017 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshop

Knowing who likes who: The early developmental basis of coalition understanding

Group biases based on broad category membership appear early in human development. However, like many other primates humans inhabit social worlds also characterised by small groups of social coalitions which are not demarcated by visible signs or social markers. A critical cognitive challenge for a young child is thus how to extract information concerning coalition structure when coalitions are dynamic and may lack stable and outwardly visible cues to membership. Therefore, the ability to decode behavioural cues of affiliations present in everyday social interactions between individuals would have conferred powerful selective advantages during our evolution. This would suggest that such an ability may emerge early in life, however, little research has investigated the developmental origins of such processing. The present paper will review recent empirical research which indicates that in the first 2 years of life infants achieve a host of social-cognitive abilities that make them well adapted to processing coalition-affiliations of others. We suggest that such an approach can be applied to better understand the origins of intergroup attitudes and biases. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Visually Perceiving the Intentions of Others

I argue that we sometimes visually perceive the intentions of others. Just as we can see something as blue or as moving to the left, so too can we see someone as intending to evade detection or as aiming to traverse a physical obstacle. I consider the typical subject presented with the Heider and Simmel movie, a widely studied ‘animacy’ stimulus, and I argue that this subject mentally attributes proximal intentions to some of the objects in the movie. I further argue that these attributions are unrevisable in a certain sense and that this result can be used to as part of an argument that these attributions are not post-perceptual thoughts. Finally, I suggest that if these attributions are visual experiences, and more particularly visual illusions, their unrevisability can be satisfyingly explained, by appealing to the mechanisms which underlie visual illusions more generally

The role of human body movements in mate selection

It is common scientific knowledge, that most of what we say within a conversation is not only expressed by the words meaning alone, but also through our gestures, postures, and body movements. This non-verbal mode is possibly rooted firmly in our human evolutionary heritage, and as such, some scientists argue that it serves as a fundamental assessment and expression tool for our inner qualities. Studies of nonverbal communication have established that a universal, culture-free, non-verbal sign system exists, that is available to all individuals for negotiating social encounters. Thus, it is not only the kind of gestures and expressions humans use in social communication, but also the way these movements are performed, as this seems to convey key information about an individuals quality. Dance, for example, is a special form of movement, which can be observed in human courtship displays. Recent research suggests that people are sensitive to the variation in dance movements, and that dance performance provides information about an individuals mate quality in terms of health and strength. This article reviews the role of body movement in human non-verbal communication, and highlights its significance in human mate preferences in order to promote future work in this research area within the evolutionary psychology framework

Light, camera, action and arrest

Gun crime is a fast growing problem in the UK and it is important to detect a potential gun crime before an incident occurs. A possible technological and cost-effective approach is to utilise the widespread and endemic installation of CCTV cameras to automatically recognise individuals carrying concealed weapons and so prompt the CCTV operator. Current machine imaging software can identify a range of suspicious behaviours but with varying accuracy and associated false alarms. CCTV operators learn to identify certain cues associated with suspicious behaviour, again with varying accuracy. In a new EPSRC supported research project, MEDUSA sets out to identify both human and machine detected cues of individuals carrying concealed guns and merge these into new software for use by CCTV operators. This paper concentrates on the identification of cues associated with carrying concealed weapons and sets out the ergonomic challenges surrounding such an approach, together with the potential ways to overcome them

Predicting Intentions from Motion: The Subject-Adversarial Adaptation Approach

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Seething But Quiet: Power Differentially Affects Public Vs. Private Expressions Of Blame

Blame is an important social act that evolved to become an integral part of social regulation. Blame is associated with significant social costs for the person facing blame (e.g., social isolation, punishment) as well as for the person expressing blame (e.g., criticism if blame is improperly given). Because of these social costs, blame must be justified or warranted by the perpetrators mental states or the severity of the outcome. The current study suggests that power is a role constraint that will uniquely affect public blame while leaving private blame unaffected. Data show that when confronting moral violations people may privately blame as they please; however, deciding when and how to express public blame is constrained by social status and power