Crabbé-Declève, G. & Jean-De Koninck, M.-C. (1974). La perception du mouvement dans l'image picturale. Journal of Phenomenal Psychology, 4, 425-444.

(Résumé.) Rapport d'expériences portant sur la reconnaissance, dans des photogrammes, des photographies ou des dessins, d'une action humaine filmée. Les résultats sont analysés à la lumière de certaines interprétations psychologiques de ce que l'on appelle le mouvement dans l'image. La reconnaissance ne pouvant pleinement rendre compte du phénomène perceptif en question, il est proposé d'y voir une forme de perception dans laquelle la dimension temporelle serait dominante.

(English Summary.) The emphasis is put on the temporal dimension of movement perception. In pictural images, temporal dimension depends on spatial distribution which, if appropriate, provides an actual movement perception. A series of original experimentations are then described. Subjects were presented with a short film showing a mime who acts either as a woodcutter or as a snow shoveler. After that, they were presented either with a series of photograms taken out from these films, or with photograms and a photography of the mime in a choosen attitude, or else with phograms and an artistic drawing of the action. Their task was to judge each picture as good or bad representation of the filmed action (five-point scale). The results showed, among other things, that the drawing gives the best representation of the action, the photography the worst. They also showed that two photograms are equivalent representations of the action; in both films these photograms were separated by plus or minus 15 centiseconds. Help for psychological interpretation was sought at first from authors who worked on similar questions in an explicit perceptual perspective. Gibson, Gombrich, Arnheim, Guiraud are successively reviewed. No one gives a satisfactory answer to our questions. The heart of the matter seems to lie in the intimate link between perceived space and time; more exactly, in the impossibility to separate time perception from space perception. This aspect was pointed out by Merleau-Ponty who saw in corporeity the root of movement perception in painting. It is also supported by experimental data such as those of Korte or of Michotte.