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.
Highlights
Aston University, Birmingham, UK 4 Multimodal and Functional Neuroimaging, Central EuropeanInstitute of Technology (CEITEC), Masaryk University, Brno, Czechia 5 First Department of Neurology, Faculty of Medicine, Masaryk University and St
Results of the analysis applied to response time (RT) data are presented below, but those for accuracy are presented in Supplementary Materials for the sake of brevity (Supplementary Figure S2)
We refer to differences among conditions according to the effects they represent: First and foremost, longer RTs on INCOM compared with COM trials express a compatibility effect, or automatic imitation (AI)
Summary
Aston University, Birmingham, UK 4 Multimodal and Functional Neuroimaging, Central European. Humans have a tendency to imitate one another during social interaction This often occurs involuntarily and outside of conscious awareness, such behaviour appears to serve important social functions; covert imitation among interactants fosters feelings of affiliation and rapport (Chartrand & Lakin, 2013). For this reason, the past decade has seen a surge of research into the cognitive processes and associated brain systems underlying our tendency to imitate others, and its relationship with other aspects of social behaviour and cognition (for reviews see Cracco et al, 2018; Darda & Ramsey, 2019). The present study performed a systematic behavioural and neurophysiological evaluation of the experimental stimuli used commonly
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
