Hulusi Kafalıgönül and colleagues have published “Biological motion is perceived as faster with shorter auditory time intervals” in Scientific Reports (June 2026).
Participants judged the walking speed of point-light figures, simple animations of a person made of dots, while hearing footstep sounds. When the gaps between footsteps were shorter, the same walker was seen as moving faster, and the effect did not depend on the timing of the first or last step alone. The study shows that what we hear can change how fast we see others move.
Authors: Sudenur Özkan, Seyma Koc Yilmaz, Hulusi Kafalıgönül