Beyond Automatic Motor Mapping: New Insights into Top-Down Modulations on Action Perception

The Effect of Judgement Bias on Cue Utilization for Shot Prediction in Basketball Athletes

“…Some studies pointed out that coping with an OUT shot involves more activities about motion perception, understanding, and intention analysing, which may be reflected in different brain areas [3,20,21]. A TMS study found an increase of corticospinal excitability specific for the hand muscle when the athletes watched OUT shots compared with IN shots, especially for the moment when the ball left the hand [13]. To the best of our knowledge, though basketball players were supposed to have better ability of visual perception [3], experts' worse performance for prediction of OUT shots may be related to their judgement bias, which further develops into subjective expectations or overconfidence.…”

“…It is demonstrated that physical movement and motor imagery share a common process [12], and action prediction is regarded as "motor resonance", which reflects a mirror-like activity in the observer's motor system during action observation. Though this process has always been identified as an inner, automatic replica of the observed movement, predictive coding models suggest that top-down modulation makes motor resonance a less faithful replica [13]. Therefore, considering the notion that mirroring the observed actions of others underlies action understanding, basketball experts' judgement bias was explained.…”

Taking apart what brings us together: The role of action prediction, perspective-taking, and theory of mind in joint action

“…This empirical evidence from developmental research is in line with the suggestion that interaction requires the predictive ability to anticipate the partner’s behaviour and adapt accordingly (Bekkering et al, 2009; Knoblich & Jordan, 2003; Vesper et al, 2013) to facilitate the achievement of a shared goal (Butterfill, 2012). Although, more broadly, inferences and predictions regarding others’ gesture may depend on the bidirectional flow of information between brain networks processing semantic or contextual and sensorimotor information (Finisguerra et al, 2020; Kilner, 2011), research on motor interaction focusses on the latter and explores to what extent the (sensorimotor) predictive and monitoring mechanisms that govern individual motor control play a role in interpersonal coordination (see Candidi et al, 2015; Pesquita et al, 2018; Pezzulo et al, 2017) when both the agent’s and the partner’s actions are represented within an integrated, dyadic motor plan (Sacheli, Arcangeli, & Paulesu, 2018). The involvement of such sensorimotor predictive mechanisms may explain how reciprocal motor adjustments can quickly occur between interacting partners.…”