Understanding Body Language
Being social creatures, humans rely on the nuances of body language to function well in society. Understanding the way body language works could help researchers gain a deeper understanding of neuroscience, improve human-machine interfaces, and develop more efficient ways to train people on the autism spectrum to read social cues.
Prof. Uri Alon of the Department of Molecular Cell Biology investigates the two main theories in the filed: the "Emotional body language" theory, that originates in psychology, and the "Dramatic action theory", that focuses in transitive verbs: to encourage, to comfort, to threaten, to scold, etc.
Testing these theories required a large and unbiased set of body posture stimuli in a social context. While most studies employ pictures of actors or cartoons in a small range of postures, Prof. Alon used a different approach: namely, stick figures.