Action Understanding Within and Outside the Motor System: The Role of Task Difficulty

Lingnau, Angelika; Petris, Sandra

doi:10.1093/cercor/bhs112

Cited by 36 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…In comparison with the controls both ID 4 and 5 performed relatively better for upper limb actions (both modified t tests, ts = 1.19) than for lower limb actions (both modified t tests, ts = 0.52). (C) All the IDs were as efficient as the controls in discriminating learned from novel actions [all modified t tests, ts ( under adverse perceptual conditions (13,19,23,24). Experiment 2 used point-light animations to test this hypothesis.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Typical action perception and interpretation without motor simulation

Vannuscorps

Caramazza

2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Every day, we interact with people synchronously, immediately understand what they are doing, and easily infer their mental state and the likely outcome of their actions from their kinematics. According to various motor simulation theories of perception, such efficient perceptual processing of others' actions cannot be achieved by visual analysis of the movements alone but requires a process of motor simulation-an unconscious, covert imitation of the observed movements. According to this hypothesis, individuals incapable of simulating observed movements in their motor system should have difficulty perceiving and interpreting observed actions. Contrary to this prediction, we found across eight sensitive experiments that individuals born with absent or severely shortened upper limbs (upper limb dysplasia), despite some variability, could perceive, anticipate, predict, comprehend, and memorize upper limb actions, which they cannot simulate, as efficiently as typically developed participants. We also found that, like the typically developed participants, the dysplasic participants systematically perceived the position of moving upper limbs slightly ahead of their real position but only when the anticipated position was not biomechanically awkward. Such anticipatory bias and its modulation by implicit knowledge of the body biomechanical constraints were previously considered as indexes of the crucial role of motor simulation in action perception. Our findings undermine this assumption and the theories that place the locus of action perception and comprehension in the motor system and invite a shift in the focus of future research to the question of how the visuo-perceptual system represents and processes observed body movements and actions.action perception | motor simulation | mirror neurons O ur social life rests in large part on our capacity to perceive and interpret others' behavior accurately to anticipate their upcoming actions and adjust our own behavior appropriately. The impairment of this ability in the context of autism, schizophrenia, various types of dementia, or following stroke or head injury has tragic consequences for both patients and society. However, how the human mind and brain supports these abilities remains a major challenge. In this study, we addressed a specific issue regarding the relationship between visual and motor processes in action perception and recognition: Does efficient perception and interpretation of action rely on unconscious, covert motor simulation of the observed movements?The traditional view on this issue is that efficient perception and interpretation of human movement does not rely on motor simulation but rather on computations occurring in the visuoperceptual system supported by basic perceptual processes and information extrapolated from perceptual learning (1-5). This view has been challenged by a series of motor simulation theories of perception which, despite their differences, all assume that efficient perceptual processing of others' actions cannot be achieved by ...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Typical action perception and interpretation without motor simulation

Vannuscorps

Caramazza

2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…In this alternative view, the phAIP activation would be interpreted as reflecting the increased level of overall attention rather than attention to different features. The factor difficulty in action observation has been explicitly manipulated by Lingnau and Petris (), who presented point‐light actions blended with different levels of dynamic noise. They reported significant main effects of noise, and hence difficulty, at the occipito‐temporal level of the AON, as well as in right lateral PFC.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of putative human anterior intraparietal sulcus area in observed manipulative action discrimination

2019

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Introduction Although it has become widely accepted that the action observation network ( AON ) includes three levels (occipito‐temporal, parietal and premotor), little is known concerning the specific role of these levels within perceptual tasks probing action observation. Recent single cell studies suggest that the parietal level carries the information required to discriminate between two‐alternative observed actions, but do not exclude possible contributions from the other two levels. Methods Two functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments used a task‐based attentional modulation paradigm in which subjects viewed videos of an actor performing a manipulative action on a coloured object, and discriminated between either two observed manipulative actions, two actors or two colours. Results Both experiments demonstrated that relative to actor and colour discrimination, discrimination between observed manipulative actions involved the putative human anterior intraparietal sulcus (ph AIP ) area in parietal cortex. In one experiment, where the observed actions also differed with regard to effectors, premotor cortex was also specifically recruited. Conclusions Our results highlight the primary role of parietal cortex in discriminating between two‐alternative observed manipulative actions, consistent with the view that this level plays a major role in representing the identity of an observed action.

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“…However, the source of this difficulty is worth noting. In the field of experimental psychology, task difficulty has been manipulated in several ways, including the stimulus characteristics [60], [61], the physical effort required in the task [62], the understandability of the stimulus content [63], the length of time allotted to make a response [64], [65], the number of cognitive operations needed to complete the task [66], the complexity of mental operations (e.g., [67]), and the strength of the inconsistency between different response tendencies [68], [69]. In the current study, the differences in difficulty levels were not caused by the stimulus characteristics or the mental steps necessary for response implementation, but they varied as a function of the degree of mental inconsistency.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Neural Response to Maternal Stimuli: An ERP Study

Cai

et al. 2014

PLoS ONE

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Mothers are important to all humans. Research has established that maternal information affects individuals' cognition, emotion, and behavior. We measured event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine attentional and evaluative processing of maternal stimuli while participants completed a Go/No-go Association Task that paired mother or others words with good or bad evaluative words. Behavioral data showed that participants responded faster to mother words paired with good than the mother words paired with bad but showed no difference in response to these others across conditions, reflecting a positive evaluation of mother. ERPs showed larger P200 and N200 in response to mother than in response to others, suggesting that mother attracted more attention than others. In the subsequent time window, mother in the mother + bad condition elicited a later and larger late positive potential (LPP) than it did in the mother + good condition, but this was not true for others, also suggesting a positive evaluation of mother. These results suggest that people differentiate mother from others during initial attentional stage, and evaluative mother positively during later stage.

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Action Understanding Within and Outside the Motor System: The Role of Task Difficulty

Cited by 36 publications

References 45 publications

Typical action perception and interpretation without motor simulation

Typical action perception and interpretation without motor simulation

The role of putative human anterior intraparietal sulcus area in observed manipulative action discrimination

The Neural Response to Maternal Stimuli: An ERP Study

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