A test movie to study elementary abilities in perception and recognition of mimic and gestural expression.

A test movie consisting of 13 different silent movie scenes, each 10 s in duration, was developed to test in patients the elementary abilities, perception and recognition of mimic and gestural expression. Each scene was subjected to 10 (2 X 5) verbal or non-verbal multiple-choice tests. Quantitative analysis of normal control group results is described. All sub-tests were very easy for normals and resulted in error scores below 5%. Thus the test is not designed to differentiate within a group of normal subjects but to characterize a pathological reduction in mimic, gesture and person recognition in schizophrenic and brain-lesioned patients. By measuring the dependency of correct recognition of the different movie scenes on the inspection duration, it was shown that the projection time of 10 s applied in the full test led to a fairly high amount of informational redundancy. This was intentional so that stimulus material could be well perceived and recognized even by patients with somewhat fluctuating attentiveness.