Consciousness and Cognition

Why does an angry face feel uncomfortable? The answer is that it signals a threat. However, a face is only part of an encounter, and distance, facial stimulus type, and gaze may shape discomfort regardless of perceived anger. To separate these cues, we conducted three within-subjects virtual reality experiments. In each experiment, 24 adults viewed avatars at intimate, personal, and social distances (30, 100, and 300 cm, respectively) and rated the faces perceived anger and their own discomfort; head movement was recorded in Experiments 2 and 3. In Experiment 1, the expression (angry, neutral) and facial color (natural, red) were crossed with distance; in Experiment 2, a featureless mannequin served as a nonface comparison; and in Experiment 3, the gaze direction (direct, averted) was manipulated. Expression primarily determined perceived anger, whereas distance predominantly determined discomfort: A nearby neutral face was uncomfortable despite low perceived anger (Experiment 1). A neutral human face was more uncomfortable than a mannequin, although both received similarly low perceived-anger ratings (Experiment 2). Direct gaze increased the discomfort without changing perceived anger (Experiment 3). Backward head movement exhibited a similar pattern, with participants leaning back more from human faces than from the mannequin. These results indicate that the discomfort associated with an angry face is not merely explained by perceived anger. Instead, social discomfort was differentially associated with interpersonal distance and gaze direction and differed between the human-face and mannequin conditions.

Certain conscious contents--such as the covert name of a viewed object--arise involuntarily and resist suppression, a phenomenon captured by the Reflexive Imagery Task (RIT). Whether a subliminal prime can bias which of two simultaneously present objects captures such an involuntary naming response has not been established. We adapted a two-object RIT into a self-contained, browser-based instrument. Thirty-eight adults (M age = 21.6 years, SD = 2.3; 26 female) viewed 24 object pairs and were instructed to fixate a central cross, to refrain from thinking of the objects names, and to click an object whenever its name intruded into awareness. On each trial a masked prime (17 ms, flanked by pattern masks) was either the exact name of one object (Exact Word Prime), a semantic associate of one object (Semantic Prime), or a neutral string (No Prime), defining a primed side per trial. A post-experiment debriefing confirmed that participants noticed the masks but none consciously perceived or could identify the prime words, indicating that the primes were subliminal. Analyses excluded 91 of 912 trials (10.0%) with more than five clicks. The priming effect was robust across measures: an omnibus comparison of clicks across conditions was significant (Friedman {chi}{superscript 2}(2) = 6.59, p = .037); within both prime conditions participants clicked the primed side more than the not-primed side (Exact Word, p = .039; Semantic, p = .005); and the primed-to-not-primed ratio exceeded parity by roughly 57-59% (Laplace-smoothed ratio {approx} 1.58; one-sample Wilcoxon p < .001 for each). A Bayesian Poisson generalized linear mixed model with random participant intercepts confirmed a credible primed-side advantage (incidence rate ratio = 1.72, 95% credible interval [1.57, 1.90]) that did not differ between prime types. No general left/right response bias emerged. An exploratory ight-side x Exact Word Prime interaction was inconsistent across model classes and is reported as hypothesis-generating. The findings indicate that subliminal lexical and semantic primes can steer the spatial locus of involuntary object naming.

Introduction: Decision making for selecting an object or a course of action from possible alternatives largely depends on our perceptual ability modulated by attention. When multiple stimuli appear close together in time, processing one stimulus can temporarily impair the processing of another due to temporal limitations of attention. Observers frequently fail to detect the second target (T2) presented within a few hundred milliseconds after the first target (T1) in a stream of stimuli, which is commonly known as attentional blink (AB). Existing theories attribute this perceptual lapse to T1 processing, distractor interference, or transient attentional gating; however, the computations underlying suppressive mechanism remains unresolved. We investigated whether pupil-size could reveal the underlying mechanisms of AB and predict conscious perception on a trial-by-trial basis. Methods: Pupil diameter and gaze locations were recorded using an infrared eye tracker. Machine learning techniques were used to classify trials when T2 was detected versus when it was not, after correct identification of T1, during an AB task from the pupil dynamics, which also yielded attentional episode (AE) associated with each element in the stream of visual stimuli when deconvolved. Results: Cross-validating classifiers achieved near-perfect accuracy not only in distinguishing but also predicting perceptual outcomes on a single-trial basis. AEs exhibited greater power when T2 was detected than when it was missed; the differential power in AEs on a logarithmic scale was highly synced with the differential pupil size. Conclusions: Collectively, these findings establish a framework for predicting attention-driven perceptual outcomes from pupil-dynamics at finer time-scale.

The absence of voluntary visual imagery, known as aphantasia, offers a unique lens into the role of visual imagery in visual memory processes such as face recognition. While aphantasics often report difficulties, behavioral differences in standard tasks have generally been small. One possibility is that the contribution of visual imagery becomes apparent only when face recognition is especially demanding. We compared age- and gender-matched aphantasics and typical imagers on the more challenging long-form version of the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT+) and on a measure of inverted face recognition. We also included tasks assessing object recognition and face perception. No group differences emerged for face perception or object recognition. By contrast, typical imagers outperformed aphantasics under high visual and mnemonic demands in face recognition in the laboratory cohort, particularly at the highest difficulty level of the CFMT+ and in inverted face recognition. This effect was attenuated or even absent in the online cohort. Drift-diffusion modelling indicated that this discrepancy was primarily driven by reduced response caution in online typical imagers. A meta-analysis of published short-form CFMT studies (total N = 432) revealed a moderate and reliable advantage for typical imagers (hedges g [&le;] 0.41). Finally, across cohorts and tasks, aphantasics reported consistently lower subjective confidence, independent of accuracy. Overall, these findings suggest that visual imagery benefits face recognition, and highlight the need for caution in online testing, the predominant approach in aphantasia research.

The increasing deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) assistive systems across healthcare, education, and organisational domains necessitates a deeper understanding of dispositional factors shaping trust and acceptance. This study investigated the Big Five personality traits as predictors of trust in and acceptance of AI assistive systems among a large adult sample (N = 380) in Makurdi Benue State. Anchored in the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) developed by Davis (1989), the study examined both direct and indirect pathways linking personality traits to AI acceptance through trust. Participants completed standardised measures of the Big Five Inventory, Trust in AI Scale, and AI Acceptance Scale. Data were analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM) with maximum likelihood estimation. The hypothesised model demonstrated good fit indices (CFI = .84, TLI = .82, RMSEA = .05). Openness to experience ({beta} = .34, p < .001) and agreeableness ({beta} = .27, p < .01) significantly predicted trust in AI systems, which in turn strongly predicted AI acceptance ({beta} = .62, p < .001). Neuroticism negatively predicted trust ({beta} = -.29, p < .001), while conscientiousness showed a modest positive direct effect on acceptance ({beta} = .18, p < .05). Extraversion was not a significant direct predictor but exerted an indirect effect through trust. Mediation analysis confirmed that trust significantly mediated the relationship between personality traits and AI acceptance. The findings underscore the centrality of dispositional traits in shaping technological trust formation and highlight the psychological architecture underlying human AI interaction. These results contribute to social psychological theory and provide empirical guidance for designing personality sensitive AI systems to enhance user adoption and sustained engagement.

Brands increasingly express their positions on social issues through advertising, social media, and public campaigns. How such messages shape consumer perception is an ongoing area of investigation. Addressing a gap in brand activism research in marketing, this study uses eye- tracking technology to examine its impact on brand attitude, eye movement behavior, and memory retention. We tested these variables across three experimental tasks: an online survey, a free- viewing task, and a surprise memory recognition test. As a result, disagreement increased reading time for text statements, while agreement increased visual engagement (fixations) with the depicted product. Positive brand attitude also enhanced memory recognition for advertisements. Overall, disagreement appears to trigger effortful processing of conflicting information, while agreement facilitates visual absorption and strengthens product recognition. These findings highlight the cognitive risks and rewards of brand activism and provide a foundation for future research on its underlying perceptual and cognitive mechanisms.

Spontaneous thought changes over time, yet the moment-to-moment factors shaping these changes remain poorly understood. We examined whether heartbeat-related bodily processing, operating largely outside explicit awareness, is associated with the organization of ongoing thought. Forty adults performed an auditory attention task with intermittent thought probes in which auditory events were scheduled either 200 ms after each detected R peak (synch condition) or independently of ongoing cardiac timing (asynch condition), with occasional omissions in both conditions. Heartbeat-synchronous omissions in this paradigm have been shown to induce cardiac deceleration and modulate heartbeat-evoked potentials (HEPs). The score of the heartbeat counting task (HCT) served as a behavioral index related to cardiac interoceptive accuracy. The results showed that higher HCT score was associated with a stronger synch-asynch shift toward more self-related and less task/self-unrelated thought. HEPs showed a synch-related negative shift across several thought groups, although the magnitude of this condition effect did not reliably differ among thought groups. Overall thought-group distributions were similar across conditions, while transition analyses suggested a tendency in the synch condition toward more frequent transitions linking predominantly interoceptive stimulus-dependent thought with both on-task and self-related thought. Together, these findings suggest that heartbeat-related bodily processing may influence the organization of spontaneous thought, particularly in individuals with greater cardiac interoceptive accuracy. Bodily signals may therefore act as an automatic constraint on the ongoing stream of thought, biasing which thought contents and transitions become more likely over time.

Building upon foundational psychological theories of event segmentation, this study addresses the limitation of overreliance on temporal boundaries as the primary segmentation criterion. Drawing on two experiments of direct and indirect causation in Mandarin Chinese, this study demonstrates how cognitive segmentation granularity and semantic integration jointly shape syntactic encoding. Results reveal distinct event encoding patterns for direct and indirect causation: coarse-grained segmentation leads to compact syntactic structures (e.g., verb-resultatives), while fine-grained segmentation yields varied multi-clausal expressions. Chinese speakers update event models via prediction errors of intentionality and protagonists, and tend to establish event boundaries at goal-relevant action endpoints when construing causal chains. These conceptual dimensions exert a modulating influence on both event segmentation and semantic integration. We propose a triad model integrating event segmentation, semantic integration, and linguistic specificity, providing a unified framework for elucidating the mind-language interface in conceptual construction and event coding of causation.

When we feel restless and easily distracted, continuously switching tasks (exploration), our pupils tend to be large. In contrast, when we are calmly focused on a single task (exploitation), our pupils tend to be small. According to the Adaptive Gain Theory (AGT), a switch from exploitation to exploration is associated with an increase in norepinephrine in the locus coeruleus, which in turn triggers pupil dilation. However, the AGT does not provide a functional explanation of why exploration triggers pupil dilation. One possibility is that visual sensitivity, which increases with pupil size, is especially important during exploration. We set out to provide evidence consistent with this functional explanation, as well as to replicate two key previous results. Participants performed a four-armed bandit task, which induces both exploration and exploitation behavior. During the task, participants also needed to detect an occasional and unpredictable near-threshold peripheral flash. We replicated two key results: pupils were larger during exploration than during exploitation; and increased pupil size (overall, independent of exploration status) was associated with increased visual sensitivity. However, most importantly, we did not find that visual sensitivity was higher during exploration than during exploitation; probably, the reliable-yet-tiny increase in pupil size during exploration was too small to affect visual sensitivity. We conclude that key previous results are replicable; however, common experimental paradigms, such as the four-armed bandit task, induce only small changes in exploration behavior. Therefore, more powerful paradigms are required in order to test functional explanations of pupil-size changes during exploration and exploitation.

When people watch the same political narrative, they often form different interpretations. Although prior research has shown that political ideology can shape shared neural responses to sociopolitical content, less is known about how individual differences in national identity ideology are associated with inter-individual similarity in neural dynamics during naturalistic viewing, particularly in sociopolitical contexts where national identity is highly salient in public discourse. We addressed this question across two studies in Taiwan by examining how Greater Chinese ideology relates to positive engagement and neural dynamics during naturalistic viewing of a pro-China video. In Study 1 (N = 52), higher Greater Chinese ideology was associated with greater positive engagement. In Study 2 (N = 60), participants underwent fMRI while viewing the same video. Intersubject representational similarity analysis showed that inter-individual similarity in Greater Chinese ideology was associated with inter-individual similarity in neural dynamics within the frontoparietal control network and default mode network. Notably, neural similarity was primarily observed among participants lower in Greater Chinese ideology, revealing an asymmetric pattern across the ideological continuum. These findings extend prior work on political ideology by demonstrating that national identity ideology is linked to both subjective experience and shared neural dynamics during political narrative processing in a non-Western context. HighlightsO_LINational identity ideology was linked to positive narrative engagement C_LIO_LIIdeology similarity mapped onto neural similarity in the FPN and DMN C_LIO_LIExperience and neural dynamics varied with national identity ideology C_LI

Visual search is a critical component of many professions such as military operations, baggage screening, and radiology. Aided Target Recognition (AiTR) systems are designed to highlight potential threats across the operator visual field in real-time, directing attention and improving accuracy. However, these systems may impact search and, consequently, situational awareness by diverting attentional resources from non-highlighted, yet relevant, locations. Previous work suggests that scene gist is extracted within the first 250 ms of scene onset (Vo & Henderson, 2010). As such, this study examined whether a 250 ms AiTR onset delay could encourage a more even distribution of attention. Participants searched synthetically generated scenes and classified each person in the scene as armed or unarmed. Depending on their condition, participants either saw the scenes unaugmented (No AiTR condition), with AiTR highlights consisting of red bounding boxes around armed people and yellow boxes around unarmed (AiTR condition), or with AiTR highlights presented 250 ms post scene onset (Delayed AiTR condition). A surprise memory test of background objects presented in the search scenes was administered to all participants upon completion of the search task. As predicted and preregistered, results showed less overt attentional deployment to background information (anything other than the people themselves) in the AiTR condition compared to No AiTR , however, decreased overt attentional deployment was not seen in the Delayed AiTR group. A similar pattern was observed in the memory data (with the AiTR condition having a lower score than the No AiTR condition and the Delayed AiTR condition), this difference was not significant.

Perception is typically biased towards prior expectations. In some cases, however, it seems repelled away from expectations, such that percepts appear less like what is expected. Even more intriguingly, separate studies have recently reported that predictions derived from gravity may shape perception in opposing ways. Specifically, gravity causes unsupported objects to accelerate downwards, leading to two predictions; that objects will move downwards (location prior) and at an increasing speed (acceleration prior). There is evidence that perceptual judgements are attracted towards location priors yet repelled from acceleration ones. Here we examine these effects in the same paradigm to determine whether they result from different types of stimuli and judgement, or more interestingly, might result from opposite influences of common predictive mechanisms influencing perception. We first replicate previous reports of a systematic bias to report upward moving objects as more accelerating than downward moving objects: effectively a repulsion from acceleration priors. We then show that the effect applies both at the level of retinal space and due to contextual cues concerning gravitational direction. Finally, we find that participants errors in a location reproduction task are similarly consistent with a repulsion from acceleration priors and, simultaneously, with an attraction towards location priors. We conclude by considering the ways in which these concurrent attractive and repulsive biases may reflect mechanisms optimising fast, accurate, and informative experiences in our ever-changing sensory world, therefore optimising the interface between perception and learning. Public Significance StatementIn a series of behavioural experiments, we show that expectations about how objects move due to gravity concurrently attract perception towards the prediction that objects move downwards, and repel perception away from the prediction that they do so at an increasing rate. These opposing influences inform current theories of perceptual processing, which explain how expectations may generate percepts that are fast, veridical, and informative.

AbstractAI-generated images, videos, and news have become an inseparable part of daily life, leading to increasing skepticism toward online information. Understanding how expectations about the presence of AI-generated content influence perception is crucial for elucidating the underlying neural mechanisms and facilitating the generation of naturalistic avatars. In this study, we analyzed an existing EEG dataset (N = 29) in which participants viewed emotional facial photographs of only real individuals while being informed that upcoming faces were either real ("REAL") or AI-generated ("FAKE"). We examined pre-stimulus oscillatory activities in the one-second EEG interval before stimulus onset and found significantly lower alpha power when participants expected "FAKE" compared to "REAL" faces. This effect was region-specific, particularly in right occipito-parietal and temporo-parietal regions, as identified by both sensor- and source- level analyses. In addition, the modulation effect between pre-stimulus alpha activity and post-stimulus event-related potentials (ERPs) was measured. A significant correlation between changes in late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes and pre-stimulus alpha power was observed exclusively for "FAKE" smiling faces, consistent with our previous findings. These results suggest that AI-related expectations modulate neural preparatory states, with lower alpha activity presumably reflecting increased attentional demands for stimuli believed to be artificially generated. This study demonstrates that top-down beliefs systematically shape both pre- and post-stimulus neural dynamics, providing new insights into how cognitive expectations bias perceptual processing, with implications for understanding human-AI interaction and improving the design and evaluation of AI- generated content in real-world contexts.

Mental imagery is viewed as a fundamental component of human cognition, supporting memory, emotional processing, future simulation, and conscious experience. Although mental imagery vividness has traditionally been attributed to differences in sensory processing, emerging evidence suggests that internally generated images are also shaped by ongoing bodily and interoceptive signals. Here, we investigated whether cardiovascular physiology contributes to individual differences in mental imagery vividness using a virtual reality paradigm in which participants encoded and reconstructed emotional and neutral scenes during a tilt-table-induced autonomic challenge. Acute autonomic changes induced by a tilt table did not alter imagery vividness. However, elevated diastolic blood pressure during the tilt-up condition predicted reduced mental imagery vividness, with the strongest effects observed for disgust and neutral imagery. Our findings provide direct evidence that the vividness of the "minds eye" is linked to cardiovascular physiology and support interoceptive accounts of consciousness in which mental imagery emerges from dynamic interactions between neural and bodily systems. More broadly, these results identify cardiovascular function as a potential physiological contributor to altered imagery experiences, including those observed in aphantasia and related clinical conditions. Significance statementVisual mental imagery has traditionally been explained as a top-down process driven by the brain. We investigated whether bottom-up physiological signals from the cardiovascular system also contribute to imagery vividness. An autonomic challenge revealed a hidden relationship between diastolic blood pressure and the vividness of emotional mental imagery, indicating that ongoing cardiovascular signals influence internally generated visual experiences. These findings identify bottom-up autonomic physiology as a previously unrecognized contributor to mental imagery and broaden current understanding of how top-down and bottom-up processes interact to shape conscious mental imagery experience.

Improving minority ethnic student retention is a global higher education priority. This mixed-methods study investigated how institutional belonging and socioeconomic status interact to shape dropout intentions among minority university students in the UK (N = 182). Quantitative results revealed that perceived course difficulty and lower subjective socioeconomic status were the strongest predictors of dropout intent. While the interaction between socioeconomic status and difficulty was non-significant, qualitative accounts showed distinct structural vulnerabilities. Financial strain restricted social integration, turning socioeconomic disparities into campus isolation. Conversely, representative curricula, diverse peer networks, and stable cultural in-groups (e.g., religious affiliations, living in the parental home) functioned as essential psychological buffers against academic exhaustion and alienation. Universities must shift from transactional models to sustained structural equity to protect vulnerable student groups.

Wayfinding in hospitals is often hindered by ineffective signage; however, the cognitive mechanisms of healthcare wayfinding symbols comprehension remain under-researched. This study utilized eye-tracking and spatial gaze mapping to examine how visual complexity, abstraction, and human figuration modulate perception in 40 healthy adults viewing 24 hospital-related healthcare wayfinding symbols. Results indicate that pupil size is a sensitive physiological marker of cognitive load, significantly influenced by visual complexity ({chi}2 = 11.32, p = .022) and abstraction ({chi}2 = 7.49, p = .027). Human figuration reduced fixation duration and increased saccade amplitude, facilitating efficient semantic integration. Furthermore, human-centric healthcare wayfinding symbols elicited streamlined gaze trajectories, whereas abstract/complex designs induced chaotic scanpaths. These findings suggest that human figuration acts as a cognitive scaffold, reducing mental effort. We provide evidence-based guidelines for optimizing healthcare wayfinding symbols by prioritizing human body representations and balancing abstraction levels. HighlightO_LIPupil size indexes cognitive load during symbol comprehension. C_LIO_LIHuman figuration cuts fixation duration, boosting wayfinding efficiency. C_LIO_LIAbstract symbols increase pupil dilation, raising cognitive load. C_LI

Empathy has been linked to facial emotion recognition, but whether empathy is associated with the structural representation of facial affect (how observers position different affects relative to one another in face-shape space) remains largely unexplored. 53 adults completed a genetic-algorithm face task that generated prototypes for 13 affects using the Basel Face Model, and completed the 60-item Empathy Quotient (EQ). The genetic-algorithm task produced structurally distinct prototypes for all 13 affects (all paired tests p < .001 Bonferroni-corrected; Cohens dz 1.74-3.13), confirming that participants generated reliable, affect-specific face representations. A 13 x 13 between-affect distance matrix was then compared between higher-EQ (n = 30) and lower-EQ (n = 23) groups. 1 pair survived full correction across all 156 off-diagonal cells: Amusement x Contempt (Cohens d = -1.31), with higher-empathy participants representing these two affects as structurally closer to each other. Both amusement and contempt are social-evaluative affects that share overlapping facial action components, and this convergence may reflect heightened sensitivity to shared expressive structure among higher-empathy observers. In exploratory analyses, permutation testing and continuous-EQ correlations pointed to a broader pattern centered on social-evaluative affects (Amusement, Awe, Contempt, Fear, Happiness, Pride, Sadness, Interest). Individual differences in empathy appear most prominently associated with how social-evaluative affects are structurally positioned in face-shape space, suggesting that empathy modulates not just emotion recognition accuracy but the representational geometry of facial affect itself.

Social media users often feel that time vanishes while scrolling, but real feeds confound novelty, rewards, social signals, and self-paced control, leaving the driver of this distortion unclear. We tested whether self-paced visual exploration is sufficient to compress subjective time by comparing active scrolling with passive, yoked viewing and a static baseline. Twenty-three adults viewed sequences of natural images under three within-subject conditions: Scrolling (self-paced mouse clicks), Watching (a passive, yoked replay of their own scrolling sequence), and a Baseline (a static image). Participants estimated the elapsed duration of each block. Subjective duration was most compressed under Scrolling (48% of elapsed time), followed by Watching (51%) and Baseline (65%). Two sources separated these effects. Adding back the empty inter-image fixations brought the image-rich conditions to within seconds of the Baseline, showing that observers barely counted the blank gaps; the Scrolling--Watching difference, by contrast, was independent of these shared gaps, isolating self-paced control as a second source of compression. Electrophysiology linked that control to anticipatory neural states and the timing of early visual responses, with no amplified encoding of individual images. The results favor an attention-weighted account of timing, on which subjective duration tracks how much attention reaches the clock, a resource that a self-paced stream and its uncounted gaps both draw away.

Creative ideation involves a dynamic exchange between exploring new idea categories and exploiting familiar ones, reflecting optimal foraging principles. Although interoceptive signals, particularly cardiac activity, are associated with differences in attention and cognitive control, their role in explore-exploit dynamics during creative idea generation remains unknown. Recording both electroencephalography (EEG) and electrocardiography (ECG) data, we used convolution general linear models to examine cardiac-brain interactions underlying semantic exploration and exploitation during creative idea generation, in both spontaneous (self-selected) and directed (externally cued) conditions. Cardiac deceleration predicted ideation time: this relationship scaled nonlinearly during exploration (category switching), but linearly during exploitation (category persistence), in both conditions. Cardiac deceleration did not predict semantic distance (between response and cue word) or response accuracy during the directed condition, suggesting that heart rate slowing reflects cognitive effort allocation rather than ideational content. Cardiac phase systematically biased explore-exploit dynamics: spontaneous switching and accurate directed-switching were preferentially associated with diastolic phases and parieto-occipital alpha (8-12 Hz) desynchronization, whereas category persistence was associated with systolic phase timing and frontal theta (4-6 Hz) synchronization. The former activity was coupled to higher CD, as expected. However, the latter time-frequency activity was linked to responses timed to systole. These findings suggest that creative ideation unfolds through embodied cardiac-cortical coordination, whereby diastolic states are associated with flexible semantic exploration and alpha-related attentional dynamics, whereas systolic states are associated with exploitative persistence and theta-related control processes. This suggests interoceptive rhythms as temporal scaffolding that structures when and how ideas emerge, fundamentally expanding creativity neuroscience beyond purely cortical models.

A fundamental question in visual perception is how the human visual system transforms the rich kinematic information present in observed actions into coherent social meaning. We addressed this by validating a 5-dimensional action space model - defined by Formidableness, Friendliness, Locomotion, Abduction, and Environmental Interaction - as a perceptual representation of avatar-conveyed actions. Using Representational Similarity Analysis, we first demonstrated strong topological correspondence between the models geometry and the structure of independent perceptual judgements, with cross-validated regression confirming the model as a generative framework that reliably predicts how observers evaluate novel actions. A morphing paradigm further revealed that perceptual ratings scaled approximately linearly with geometric distances along model dimensions, with each dimension selectively predicting its corresponding perceptual quality, satisfying the criteria for a valid psychological metric space. Critically, the 5D model showed substantially stronger alignment with semantic representations of actions than with their raw skeletal kinematics - an association robust to statistical control for kinematic similarity. This dissociation suggests that higher-order social-evaluative dimensions of action perception are largely invariant to low-level motion statistics, consistent with a hierarchical visual processing architecture in which kinematic input is progressively abstracted into a compact, semantically organised representational space optimised for social inference.