Johansson’s Walking man is an animation with 10 dots that depict the movements of 10 points of the body of a young man who is walking. If you watch the upper part of the animation for a while you may notice slight limping (Johansson 1973).

Biological motion is the name of a visual phenomenon that we use to perceive and interpret the type of moving of human beings or animals. Our visual system is very sensitive to information in motion and creates understandable images of even very blurred or scanty information like in Johansson’s Walking Man. The ten points were recorded during walking and reduced to dots that show ellipsoid movements if you watch individual points. Since the movements of the points are synchronous we see a moving young person.

Perception of biological motion is lost in some children and adults with brain damage or structural deviations from normal. Therefore this simple test is worth using in assessment of all children with unusual visual behaviours. Loss of recognition and interpretation of the content and type of movements causes difficulties in understanding of body language and in learning to copy expressional movements. The loss may not be complete and thus training that is started early and included in many play situations may lead to much better visual functioning in this socially important area.

For further reading:
Johansson G. Spatio-temporal differentiation and integration in visual motion perception. An experimental and theoretical analysis of calculus-like functions in visual data processing. Psychol Res 1976; 38: 379-393.

Pavlova M, Staudt M, Sokolov A, Birbaumer N, Krägeloh-Mann I. Perception and production of biological movement in patients with early periventricular brain lesions. Brain (2003), 126, 692-701

Marshall PJ, Shipley TF. Event-related potentials to point-light displays of human actions in five-month-old infants. Dev Neuropsychol. 2009;34(3):368-77

Biomotion Lab - http://www.biomotionlab.ca/
The homepage contains numerous moving patterns. They would be very useful in assessment of visually impaired children if the dots would be slightly larger.

Right-click on the animation and choose "Save picture as...", if you want to save the gif version.

Download the flash version (zip packed swf, 4 KB).

Download the stand alone version (exe, 3,3 MB).

[ Back to Games ]