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Abstract

Recognizing actions of others in the periphery is required for fast and appropriate reactions to events in our environment (e.g. seeing kids running towards the street when driving). Previous results show that action recognition is surprisingly accurate even in far periphery (<=60° visual angle (VA)) when actions were directed towards the observer (front view). The front view of a person is considered to be critical for social cognitive processes (Schillbach et al., 2013). To what degree does the orientation of the observed action (front vs. profile view) influence the identification of the action and the recognition of the action's valence across the horizontal visual field? Participants saw life-size stick figure avatars that carried out one of six motion-captured actions (greeting actions: handshake, hugging, waving and aggressive actions: slapping, punching and kicking). The avatar was shown on a large screen display at different positions up to 75° VA. Participants either assessed the emotional valence of the action or identified the action either as ‘greeting’ or as ‘attack’. Orientation had no significant effect on accuracy. Reaction times were significantly faster for profile than for front views (p=0.003) for both tasks, which is surprising in light of recent suggestions