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

Abstract

The ability to act together with others to achieve common goals is crucial in life, yet there is no full consensus on the underlying cognitive skills. While influential theoretical accounts suggest that interaction requires sophisticated insights into others’ minds, alternative views propose that high-level social skills might not be necessary because interactions are grounded on sensorimotor predictive mechanisms. At present, empirical evidence is insufficient to decide between the two. This study addressed this issue and explored the association between performance at joint action tasks and cognitive abilities in three domains - action prediction, perspective-taking, and theory of mind - in healthy adults (N=58). We found that, while perspective-taking played a role in reading the behaviour of others independently of the social context, action prediction abilities specifically influenced the agents’ performance in an interactive task but not in a control (social but non-interactive) task. In our study, performance at a theory of mind test did not play any role, as confirmed by Bayesian analyses. The results suggest that, in adults, sensorimotor predictive mechanisms might play a significant and specific role in supporting interpersonal coordination during motor interactions. We discuss the implications of our findings for the contrasting theoretical views described above and propose a way they might be partly reconciled.

Social Action Effects: Representing Predicted Partner Responses in Social Interactions

“…The visual representation of bodily movement is necessarily specific to either own actions or actions of social interaction partners, which can be expected to exert a unique impact on action control (Kunde et al, 2018 ). This is especially plausible in light of current theories on action observation, which usually assume that using one’s own motor system to simulate observed movements is a key component in interpreting other people’s actions and making predictions about the outcome of these actions (Knoblich and Flach, 2001 ; Keller et al, 2007 ; Sacheli et al, 2021 ). Using similar simulations for partners’ reactions could help predict the effectors that they will use to execute their responses.…”

Biological Motion in Robots and Users’ Action Understanding

“…This direct matching account posits that observing others' action simultaneously activates the motor networks in our brains responsible for executing the same action (Rizzolatti & Fogassi, 2014). Contrastingly, predictive encoding sees action understanding as an active inferential process (Press et al, 2020), in which people draw upon prior experience and expectations to understand the observed action and infer what happens next (Sacheli et al, 2022).…”

When Corticospinal Inhibition Favors an Efficient Motor Response

“…In social contexts, the motor system integrates predictions about the actions of others and plans the most appropriate responses, with a very high level of sophistication [1][2][3][4][5].…”