Abstract
Action plans are not generated from scratch for each movement, but features of recently generated plans are recalled for subsequent movements. This study investigated whether the observation of an action is sufficient to trigger plan recall processes. Participant dyads performed an object manipulation task in which one participant transported a plunger from an outer platform to a center platform of different heights (first move). Subsequently, either the same (intra-individual task condition) or the other participant (inter-individual task condition) returned the plunger to the outer platform (return moves). Grasp heights were inversely related to center target height and similar irrespective of direction (first vs. return move) and task condition (intra- vs. inter-individual). Moreover, participants' return move grasp heights were highly correlated with their own, but not with their partners' first move grasp heights. Our findings provide evidence that a simulated action plan resembles a plan of how the observer would execute that action (based on a motor representation) rather than a plan of the actually observed action (based on a visual representation).
Highlights
A large corpus of work demonstrates that action plans are not generated from scratch for each movement, but features of recently generated plans are recalled and used for subsequent actions [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
Cohen and Rosenbaum [1] argued that if participants would have generated a new action plan for the return moves, the object should have been grasped at a similar height regardless of target height
Given that grasp heights for the return moves were similar to those of the first moves, they postulated that participants created a new action plan for the first move and recalled and slightly modified this plan for the return moves in order to reduce the cognitive costs associated with action planning
Summary
A large corpus of work demonstrates that action plans are not generated from scratch for each movement, but features of recently generated plans are recalled and used for subsequent actions [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. Given the work demonstrating that the visual representation of the observed action is mapped onto a motor representation of the same action during action observation [8], it stands to reason that an observer should be able to recall a simulated action plan and re-use it for their forthcoming executed actions To this end, we modified the sequential grasping and placing task introduced by Cohen and Rosenbaum [1] to a social interaction scenario. In the present sequential object manipulation task, the same action goal (i.e., placing the object onto a specific platform) could be achieved by different means (i.e., exact grasp height at the object), and previous research has regularly demonstrated the presence of individual differences in those tasks [2,23,24,25,26] Such a task allows us to dissociate between whether a simulated action plan is based on a visual representation or a motor representation. If action simulation is based on the specific motor representation in the observer, we expected that participants’ grasp height of the return moves should be more similar to their own first move grasp height compared to their partners first move grasp height
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