Abstract
Many daily activities involve synchronizing with other people’s actions. Previous literature has revealed that a slowdown of performance occurs whenever the action to be carried out is different to the one observed (i.e., visuomotor interference). However, action execution can be facilitated by observing a different action if it calls for an interactive gesture (i.e., social motor priming). The aim of this study is to investigate the costs and benefits of spontaneously processing a social response and then executing the same or a different action. Participants performed two different types of grips, which could be either congruent or not with the socially appropriate response and with the observed action. In particular, participants performed a precision grip (PG; thumb-index fingers opposition) or a whole-hand grasp (WHG; fingers-palm opposition) after observing videos showing an actor performing a PG and addressing them (interactive condition) or not (non-interactive condition). Crucially, in the interactive condition, the most appropriate response was a WHG, but in 50 percent of trials participants were asked to perform a PG. This procedure allowed us to measure both the facilitator effect of performing an action appropriate to the social context (WHG)—but different with respect to the observed one (PG)—and the cost of inhibiting it. These effects were measured by means of 3-D kinematical analysis of movement. Results show that, in terms of reaction time and movement time, the interactive request facilitated (i.e., speeded) the socially appropriate action (WHG), whereas interfered with (i.e., delayed) a different action (PG), although observed actions were always PGs. This interference also manifested with an increase of maximum grip aperture, which seemingly reflects the concurrent representation of the socially appropriate response. Overall, these findings extend previous research by revealing that physically incongruent action representations can be integrated into a single action plan even during an offline task and without any training.
Highlights
A wealth of research has shown that motor response is facilitated if the action to be carried out has been recently observed
A significant interaction of Condition by Type of Grasp was shown for Reaction Time (RT) (F(2,30) = 50.341, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.770) and for Movement Time (MT) [F(2,30) = 30.335, p < 0.001, ηp2= 0.669]
Our results extend previous literature on social interactions by showing that interactive requests can facilitate incongruent—but appropriate—responses and interfere with congruent—but inappropriate—grasping actions
Summary
A wealth of research has shown that motor response is facilitated (e.g., shorter reaction times and increased accuracy) if the action to be carried out has been recently observed. This phenomenon, termed visuomotor priming, has been defined as the facilitation to perform an action congruent with the observed one (Heyes, 2011). For example, someone holding a mug by its handle—using a three-digit grasp—hands it to us, we automatically grasp the ‘available’ surface with a whole-hand grip, rather than imitating the observed grip In this case, the two actions are physically incongruent, yet complementary. It appears that action observation does not automatically lead to imitation, but rather, depending on sensorimotor experience, observed actions could prime different responses
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