Motor cognition and its role in the phylogeny and ontogeny of action understanding.

Gallese, Vittorio; Rochat, Magali Jane; Cossu, Giuseppe; Sinigaglia, Corrado

doi:10.1037/a0014436

Cited by 229 publications

(188 citation statements)

References 116 publications

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“…Another possibility is that motor simulation is particularly important in learning to recognize new actions (25,26). Experiment 3 tested 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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“…Another possibility is that motor simulation is particularly important in learning to recognize new actions (25,26). Experiment 3 tested 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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show abstract

“…Although advocates of these theories grant that alternative mechanisms (e.g., nonmotoric regions that show heightened response to inefficient actions; ref. 45) may exist (46), they argue that the ability to map observed actions directly onto first-person motor representations provides a privileged and developmentally foundational route to understanding to others' intentions (13,20).…”

Section: Relation To Motor Theoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In particular, we explore the claim that our ability to understand others' goals depends on first-person experience producing goaldirected action (12)(13)(14)(15). On one version of this proposal-the ideomotor or motor resonance view (16)-online processing of others' actions requires reactivation of motor representations (so-called mirror neurons; refs.…”

Section: The Origins Of Rational Action Knowledgementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our second aim was to investigate a related proposal about the origins of goal-based action representations-specifically, the claim that the general concept of goal-directed action is itself constructed from active production (12,13). On the strongest version of this view, the very notion that movements are directed toward goals may be learned from early first-person experience engaging in intentional action (27,28).…”

Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…If such a mechanism were the sole foundation for action comprehension, infants' initial understanding of action goals should be limited to those for which they have built the relevant set of associations at this first-person motoric level (13,15). There is ample evidence that humans develop alternative mechanisms, as even infants at the end of their first year are able to interpret (and reason about the efficiency of) unfamiliar actions performed by novel agents (5,6), as well as actions that violate human biomechanical constraints (26).…”

Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

First-person action experience reveals sensitivity to action efficiency in prereaching infants

Skerry

Carey

Spelke

2013

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

143

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Do infants learn to interpret others' actions through their own experience producing goal-directed action, or does some knowledge of others' actions precede first-person experience? Several studies report that motor experience enhances action understanding, but the nature of this effect is not well understood. The present research investigates what is learned during early motoric production, and it tests whether knowledge of goal-directed actions, including an assumption that actors maximize efficiency given environmental constraints, exists before experience producing such actions. Three-month-old infants (who cannot yet effectively reach for and grasp objects) were given novel experience retrieving objects that rested on a surface with no barriers. They were then shown an actor reaching for an object over a barrier and tested for sensitivity to the efficiency of the action. These infants showed heightened attention when the agent reached inefficiently for a goal object; in contrast, infants who lacked successful reaching experience did not differentiate between direct and indirect reaches. Given that the infants could reach directly for objects during training and were given no opportunity to update their actions based on environmental constraints, the training experience itself is unlikely to have provided a basis for learning about action efficiency. We suggest that infants apply a general assumption of efficient action as soon as they have sufficient information (possibly derived from their own action experience) to identify an agent's goal in a given instance.A hallmark of goal-directed action is its flexibility (1). Intelligent agents draw on causal and functional knowledge to update their action plans based on the constraints and affordances of the current environment. As a result, the same goal can be achieved with various means depending on the situation, and the same movements can reflect diverse goals. This flexibility poses a nontrivial inference problem for the outside observer seeking to uncover agents' intentions and predict their future behavior.Humans nonetheless make sense of others' behavior, and do so by recruiting a "theory of mind" that relates observable actions to subjective mental states (2). This intuitive theory relies on a key assumption that agents are rational, pursuing their goals with the most efficient means possible in a given context (3, 4). By assuming that agents pursue their goals efficiently, an observer can flexibly adapt expectations about others' actions to the constraints of a given situation, and can interpret the same actions differently based on the context. This efficiency assumption thus constrains an otherwise underdetermined inference problem, providing a flexible schema for explaining and predicting action.The Origins of Rational Action Knowledge Studies with human infants suggest that this efficiency assumption is in place by the second half of the first year. When shown visual displays of an agent passing over an obstacle to approach a goal object, infants ex...

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The turn to biology

Newton¹

2016

The Sociological Review Monographs

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This article firstly discusses social science reference to animal studies. The latter remain important in engagement with life science because of their frequent deployment and because of increased calls to re‐examine animal research among sociologists and other social scientists. Extending from this discussion, it is argued that social scientists still tend to exhibit a questionable selectivity in their treatment of life‐science research. In addition, it is suggested that insufficient attention is paid to epistemological differences between life and social science. The article concludes by outlining an approach to interdisciplinary endeavour that combines ‘parallelism’ with mutually reflexive scrutiny of social and life science assumption.

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Motor cognition and its role in the phylogeny and ontogeny of action understanding.

Cited by 229 publications

References 116 publications

Typical action perception and interpretation without motor simulation

Typical action perception and interpretation without motor simulation

First-person action experience reveals sensitivity to action efficiency in prereaching infants

The turn to biology

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