Authorship effects in the prediction of handwriting strokes: Evidence for action simulation during action perception

Abstract

Does the action system contribute to action perception? Recent evidence suggests that actions are simulated while being observed. Given that the planning and simulating system are the same only when one observes one's own actions, it might be easier to predict the future outcomes of actions when one has carried them out oneself earlier on. In order to test this hypothesis, three experiments were conducted in which participants observed parts of earlier self- and other-produced trajectories and judged whether another stroke would follow or not. When the trajectories were produced without constraints, participants accomplished this task only for self-produced trajectories. When the trajectories were produced under narrow constraints, the predictions were equally accurate for self- and for other-generated trajectories. These results support the action simulation assumption. The more the actions that one observes resemble the way one would carry them out oneself, the more accurate the simulation.

The motor theory of speech perception reviewed

“…16 Knoblich and Flach (2001) found that when watching video clips representing an arm throwing a dart toward a target, participants were better at predicting the outcome of a throw when the video clips were of their own arm, rather than of that of someone else. Similar results have been obtained for participants' predictions about whether or not a new stroke will follow a dynamically presented handwritten symbol (Knoblich, Seigerschmidt, Flach, & Prinz, 2002).…”

Performing hand actions assists the visual discrimination of similar hand postures

“…Most of the data on mirror neurons has been collected in allocentric third person conditions. However, it has been proposed that when one perceives one's own actions, there is a closer match between the predicted and actual outcomes of the action than when we perceive the actions of others (Knoblich, Seigerschmidt, Flach, & Prinz, 2002). Therefore, it could be expected that in motor-visual priming the first person perspective would show stronger effects than the third person perspective, and this was indeed the case.…”

Long- and short-term plastic modeling of action prediction abilities in volleyball

“…Previous studies have suggested that motor activation during action observation is higher for actions viewed from a spatial perspective which is compatible rather than incompatible with the actor's perspective (Alaerts et al, 2009;Maeda et al, 2002;Urgesi et al, 2006b). Furthermore, observers are more accurate in perceptual predictions for videos showing self-produced actions than for videos showing similar actions produced by other individuals (Knoblich & Flach, 2001;Knoblich, Seigerschmidt, Flach, & Prinz, 2002). In keeping with the notion that observed actions are perceived using internal models of the sensory consequences of executed actions (Hommel et al, 2001;Prinz, 1997), these results suggest that action prediction is maximally facilitated for close match between predicted and actual action outcomes like in the case of actions that are self-produced or belonging to the observers' motor repertoire.…”