Naoyuki Matsuzaki

The Perception of Facial Expressions from Two-Frame Apparent Motion

We examined the contribution of motion information in perceiving facial expressions using point-light displays of faces. First, we established the minimum number of feature points necessary for the perception of facial expression from a single image. Next, we examined the effects of motion with a stimulus using an insufficient number of dots. We used two conditions. In the motion condition, the apparent motion was induced by a preceding neutral face image followed by an emotional face image. In the repetition condition, the same emotional face image was presented twice. The performance was higher in the motion condition than in the repetition condition. This advantage was reduced by inserting a white blank field between the neutral and emotional faces thus confirming that the improvement was due to the motion.

Effects of physical display size and amplitude of oscillation on visually induced motion sickness

Viewing environment is an important factor to understand the mechanism of visually induced motion sickness (VIMS). In Experiment 1, we investigated whether the symptom of VIMS changed depending on viewing angle and physical display size. Our results showed that larger viewing angle made the symptom of sickness severer and nausea symptom changed depending on physical display size with identical viewing angles. In Experiment 2, we investigated effects of viewing angle and amplitude of oscillation. The results showed that the effects of viewing angle were not only related to amplitude of oscillation but also to the other factors of viewing angle.

Cross-modal information display to improve driving performance

We developed a driving simulator with visual and/or auditory information display to enhance the perception of lateral position of the driving car in real-time. The purpose of this study was to test effects of the cross-modal assistance information on the driving performance. We found the discrete visual assistance improved the driving accuracy, but increased the driving load. For auditory and audio-visual assistances, the continuous information improved the accuracy without increasing the load. Thus, the cross-modal information is useful for assisting and improving drivers performance with fewer loads.