Action recognition in the visual periphery

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Humans are inherently social, interacting with others in various public spaces, such as train platforms, where diverse social actions—like hugging, waving, and shaking hands—are commonplace. Recognizing these actions is crucial for facilitating interactions, making action recognition a growing research focus. This Ph.D. thesis investigates action recognition in both central and peripheral vision, aiming to understand these processes under more naturalistic conditions. It extends knowledge into realistic scenarios and the far visual periphery through four studies utilizing life-size action stimuli. Study I demonstrated high categorization performance for social actions across the visual field, with a nonlinear decline towards the periphery. Study II found that action recognition in the far visual periphery is viewpoint-dependent. Study III measured large perceptive fields for action recognition, which decrease in size towards the periphery. Study IV showed that a surrounding crowd does not influence action recognition in either central or peripheral vision. Overall, the findings suggest that the capabilities of peripheral vision have been underestimated, indicating its significant role in daily life beyond merely directing gaze saccades to environmental events.