Abstract
Establishing direct gaze has been shown to enhance the tendency to automatically imitate the other person’s actions, an effect that seems to be reduced in autism. Most previous studies, however, used experimental tasks that may have confounded the measurement of automatic imitation with spatial compatibility effects. This calls into question whether gaze cues regulate automatic imitation, or instead affect domain-general processes of response inhibition. Using a task that disentangled imitative from spatial compatibility effects, the current study re-examined the role of autistic traits on the modulation of automatic imitation by direct and averted gaze cues. While our results do not provide evidence for an overall significant influence of gaze on neither automatic imitation nor spatial compatibility, autistic traits were predictive of a reduced inhibition of imitative behaviour following averted gaze. Nonetheless, exploratory analyses suggested that the observed modulation by autistic traits may actually be better explained by the effects of concomitant social anxiety symptoms. In addition, the ethnicity of the imitated agent was identified as another potential modulator of the gaze effects on automatic imitation. Overall, our findings highlight the contextual nature of automatic imitation, but call for a reconsideration of the role of gaze on imitative behaviour.
Highlights
Establishing direct gaze has been shown to enhance the tendency to automatically imitate the other person’s actions, an effect that seems to be reduced in autism
Behavioural findings are supported by neuroscientific studies showing that direct gaze enhances neural mirroring of others’ motor actions as compared to averted g aze[12,13], and which identified the medial prefrontal cortex as a key brain region mediating the control of automatic imitation by g aze[14]
The Generalized linear mixed-effect models (GLMM) on Reaction times (RT) data confirmed the occurrence of both imitative compatibility, b = 10.23, 95% CI = [7.57, 12.90], SE = 1.36, t = 7.53, p < 0.001, and spatial compatibility effects, b = 22.31, 95% CI = [19.63, 24.99], SE = 1.37, t = 16.34, p < 0.001 (Fig. 3)
Summary
Establishing direct gaze has been shown to enhance the tendency to automatically imitate the other person’s actions, an effect that seems to be reduced in autism. In the context of automatic imitation, Wang et al.[6] showed that people tend to copy observed irrelevant movements more if the imitated agent establishes direct gaze, as compared to when the agent averts the gaze away from the participant. This finding has since been replicated in successive experiments[11], which further demonstrated that the enhancement of automatic imitation following direct gaze is related to audience effects and the signalling of affiliation intent, rather than due to gaze-triggered shifts in spatial attention.
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