Perceived Action Units as a Function of Subjective Importance

Abstract

The present study investigated the perception of action units in a videotaped behavior sequence as a function of the subjective importance attached to them. Subjects were asked to tutor a student and were promised payment depending on the student's performance. To manipulate subjective importance, some tutoring responses were labeled more effective in one treatment group than they were in a second group. Subjects were predicted to subjectively weight responses as more important for earning money when they were labeled more effective and, hence, should press an event-recorder button more often in that treatment condition. Results confirmed the prediction and indicated that greater subjective importance resulted in discriminating a larger number of action units in the behavior sequence. Findings are discussed in terms of the effect of subjective importance on perceptual segmentation.