Top-down modulation of motor priming by belief about animacy

Roman Liepelt, Marcel Brass

Publikation: Beitrag in FachzeitschriftZeitschriftenaufsätzeForschungBegutachtung

Abstract

There is recent evidence that we directly map observed actions of other agents onto our own motor repertoire, referred to as direct matching (Iacoboni et al., 1999). This was shown when we are actively engaged in joint action with others' (Sebanz et al. 2003) and also when observing irrelevant movements while executing congruent or incongruent movements (Brass et al., 2000). However, an open question is whether direct matching in human beings is limited to the perception of intentional agents. Recent research provides contradictory evidence with respect to the question whether the direct matching system has a biological bias possibly emerging from perceptual differences of the stimulus display. In this study all participants performed a motor priming task observing the identical animation showing finger lifting movements of a hand in a leather glove. Before running the experiment we presented either a human hand or a wooden analog hand wearing the leather glove. We found a motor priming effect for both human and wooden hands. However, motor priming was larger when participants believed that they interacted with a human hand than when they believed to interact with a wooden hand. The stronger motor priming effect for the biological agent suggests that the "direct matching system" is tuned to represent actions of animate agents.

OriginalspracheDeutsch
ZeitschriftExperimental Psychology
Jahrgang57
Ausgabenummer3
Seiten (von - bis)221-227
Seitenumfang7
ISSN1618-3169
DOIs
PublikationsstatusVeröffentlicht - 2010

Fachgebiete und Schlagwörter

  • Analysis of Variance
  • Culture
  • Female
  • Fingers
  • Humans
  • Imitative Behavior
  • Male
  • Motor Activity
  • Movement
  • Photic Stimulation
  • Psychomotor Performance
  • Reaction Time
  • Surveys and Questionnaires
  • Visual Perception
  • Young Adult
  • Journal Article
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Zitation