Imitation or Polarity Correspondence? Behavioural and Neurophysiological Evidence for the Confounding Influence of Orthogonal Spatial Compatibility on Measures of Automatic Imitation

Abstract

During social interactions, humans tend to imitate one another involuntarily. To investigate the neurocognitive mechanisms driving this tendency, researchers often employ stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) tasks to assess the influence that action observation has on action execution. This is referred to as automatic imitation (AI). The stimuli used frequently in SRC procedures to elicit AI often confound action-related with other nonsocial influences on behaviour; however, in response to the rotated hand-action stimuli employed increasingly, AI partly reflects unspecific up-right/down-left biases in stimulus-response mapping. Despite an emerging awareness of this confounding orthogonal spatial-compatibility effect, psychological and neuroscientific research into social behaviour continues to employ these stimuli to investigate AI. To increase recognition of this methodological issue, the present study measured the systematic influence of orthogonal spatial effects on behavioural and neurophysiological measures of AI acquired with rotated hand-action stimuli in SRC tasks. In Experiment 1, behavioural data from a large sample revealed that complex orthogonal spatial effects exert an influence on AI over and above any topographical similarity between observed and executed actions. Experiment 2 reproduced this finding in a more systematic, within-subject design, and high-density electroencephalography revealed that electrocortical expressions of AI elicited also are modulated by orthogonal spatial compatibility. Finally, source localisations identified a collection of cortical areas sensitive to this spatial confound, including nodes of the multiple-demand and semantic-control networks. These results indicate that AI measured on SRC procedures with the rotated hand stimuli used commonly might reflect neurocognitive mechanisms associated with spatial associations rather than imitative tendencies.

Relationships between the race Implicit Association Test and other measures of implicit and explicit social cognition

“…Finally, the lack of relationships between the race-IAT and the measures of social cognition that we have employed may be explained by each of these constituent tasks relying on, to a greater or lesser extent, other (non-social) cognitive or attentional processes. Recently it has been shown that the Stimulus Response Compatibility task, which is used commonly to measure imitative tendencies (Cracco et al, 2018), captures more general-purpose cognitive processes deployed in both social and non-social contexts, such as response inhibition and interference resolution (Czekóová et al, 2021;Rauchbauer et al, 2021). Furthermore, Santiesteban et al (2012) provide evidence that the Dot Task relies on the directional rather than agentive features of the task avatar, suggesting that performance on this task may reflect automatic attentional orienting rather than perspective taking per se.…”

A high‐density EEG investigation into the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying differences between personality profiles in social information processing

“…Due to the between‐subject stimulus presentation we employed in our earlier study, only half of the original sample responded to the right stimulus hand oriented counter‐clockwise that we focused on here (RIGHT‐90) – the other half observed a left hand oriented clockwise (LEFT+90). Since we have shown more recently that the latter stimulus elicits both imitative‐ and spatial‐compatibility effects (Czekóová et al ., 2021), we re‐inspected these prior results to determine whether responses differed to each of these stimulus hands. Indeed, while the RIGHT‐90 stimulus elicited a positive compatibility effect (M = 28.35, SE = 2.99 ms), this was reversed for the LEFT+90 (M = −9.17, SE = 3.19 ms) – that is, responses were facilitated by imitatively incompatible actions produced by this latter stimulus.…”

“…Each block presented one of four different stimulus hands: an actor's right or left hand rotated clockwise (LEFT+90, RIGHT+90) or counter‐clockwise (LEFT‐90, RIGHT‐90) from the participants' perspective. As we have since shown that only the right stimulus hand presented counter‐clockwise isolates imitative from confounding spatial compatibility effects (Czekóová et al ., 2021), we only consider data acquired during the RIGHT‐90 block herein. Note that Catch trials were included in the paradigm only to ensure that participants paid attention throughout the task.…”

Relationships between the race implicit association test and other measures of implicit and explicit social cognition

“…Finally, the lack of relationships between the race-IAT and the measures of social cognition that we have employed may be explained by each of these constituent tasks relying on, to a greater or lesser extent, other (non-social) cognitive or attentional processes. Recently it has been shown that the Stimulus Response Compatibility task, which is used commonly to measure imitative tendencies ( Cracco et al, 2018 ), captures more general-purpose cognitive processes deployed in both social and non-social contexts, such as response inhibition and interference resolution ( Czekóová et al, 2021 ; Rauchbauer et al, 2021 ). Furthermore, Santiesteban et al (2012) provide evidence that the Dot Task relies on the directional rather than agentive features of the task avatar, suggesting that performance on this task may reflect automatic attentional orienting rather than perspective taking per se .…”