Knowledge of effort modulates visual memory biases for body postures

The visual memory of others’ postures has been proposed to be shaped by knowledge and expectations. For example, the visual memory of a lifted arm was recently shown to be biased downward, suggesting that observers predicted the upcoming state of the arm based on knowledge of the effort required to hold the arm up against gravity. Alternatively, the downward bias for body postures could reflect an automatic normalization toward the most frequently observed arm position, with arms more often observed in a low position. Here, in three experiments, we provide evidence that the downward bias is flexibly modulated by knowledge of effort. In Experiment 1, we found a stronger downward bias for arm postures that are relatively effortful (lifting an arm above the shoulders while standing) compared with arm postures that are less effortful (lifting an arm above the chest while lying down). In Experiment 2, we found a stronger downward bias when the actor was standing (viewed from the side) than when the actor was lying down (viewed from above), even though the arm postures were visually identical. Moreover, dividing attention during the encoding stage reduced the bias, showing that attentive processing of the stimulus was required for the bias to emerge. Finally, in Experiment 3, we found that concurrently executing the observed posture during the visual memory task did not further increase the downward bias. Together, these findings demonstrate a high-level cognitive influence on the visual memory for body postures.