Abstract
Action priming following action observation is thought to be caused by the observed action kinematics being represented in the same brain areas as those used for action execution. But, action priming can also be explained by shared goal representations, with compatibility between observation of the agent’s gaze and the intended action of the observer. To assess the contribution of action kinematics and eye-gaze cues in the prediction of an agent’s action goal and action priming, participants observed actions where the availability of both cues was manipulated. Action observation was followed by action execution, and the congruency between the target of the agent’s and observer’s actions, and the congruency between the observed and executed action spatial location were manipulated. Eye movements were recorded during the observation phase, and the action priming was assessed using motion analysis. The results showed that the observation of gaze information influenced the observer’s prediction speed to attend to the target, and that observation of action kinematic information influenced the accuracy of these predictions. Motion analysis results showed that observed action cues alone primed both spatial incongruent and object congruent actions, consistent with the idea that the prime effect was driven by similarity between goals and kinematics. The observation of action and eye-gaze cues together induced a prime effect complementarily sensitive to object and spatial congruency. While observation of the agent’s action kinematics triggered an object-centered and kinematic-centered action representation, independently, the complementary observation of eye-gaze triggered a more fine-grained representation illustrating a specification of action kinematics toward the selected goal. Even though both cues differentially contributed to action priming, their complementary integration led to a more refined pattern of action priming.
Highlights
Making sense of the behaviors of others and predicting the likely outcome of their actions is an essential component of interactive behavior (Wilson and Knoblich, 2005), thought to rely on common action observation and execution neural processes
The results showed that the speed at which the participants correctly oriented their attention to the target of an observed action was influenced by the availability of eye-gaze information, whereas manipulating action information influenced the accuracy of the predictions
The combined availability of action and gaze cues provided the most reliable prediction cues for both prediction speed and accuracy. These results show that when observing a human agent performing a goal-directed action, participants appeared to prioritize attention to the agent’s eyes, and that information from both the agent’s eye-gaze and action cues were important for predicting the target to which the agent intended to act toward
Summary
Making sense of the behaviors of others and predicting the likely outcome of their actions is an essential component of interactive behavior (Wilson and Knoblich, 2005), thought to rely on common action observation and execution neural processes (e.g., the mirror neuron system, MNS; Rizzolatti and Craighero, 2004) These overlapping processes between observation and Action and gaze in motor priming execution allow for the observation of a specific action to activate the observer’s motor system. They reported results from a set of motor neurons that was active both for the observation of a fully visible reach and grasp action to an object, and for the observation of a similar action where part of the reach and the grasp was occluded from vision by a screen (though the observer knew that there was a target object behind the screen) In this case, an early anticipation of the action goal must have been computed. The observer must have somehow relied on other visual information to extract relevant cues regarding the presence of the occluded action and target, and this caused predictive motor neural activation
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
