Abstract
Making correct inferences regarding social and individual intentions may be crucial for successful interactions, especially when we are required to discriminate between cooperative and competitive behaviors. The results of previous studies indicate that reach-to-grasp kinematic parameters may be used to infer the social or individual outcome of a movement. However, the majority of the studies investigated this ability by presenting reach-to-grasp movements from a third-person perspective only. The aim of the present study was to assess whether the ability to recognize the intent associated to a reach-to-grasp movement varies as a function of perspective by manipulating the perspective of observation (second- and third-perspective) within participants. To this end, we presented participants with video clips of models performing a reach-to-grasp movement with different intents. The video clips were recorded both from a lateral view (third-person perspective) and from a frontal view (second-person perspective). After viewing the clips, in two subsequent tasks participants were asked to distinguish between social and non-social intentions by observing the initial phase of the same action recorded from the two different views. Results showed that, when a fast-speed movement was presented from a lateral view, participants were able to predict its social intention. In contrast, when the same movement was observed from a frontal view, performance was impaired. These results indicate that the ability to detect social intentions from motor cues can be biased by the visual perspective of the observer, specifically for fast-speed movements.
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Notes
To avoid misunderstanding and in line with Sartori, Becchio and Castiello (2011), with the term “social intention” we referred to an action intention that involves other agents (i.e., to grasp an object and move it to give it to somebody). In contrast, with the term “motor intention” we referred to the general goal of an action (i.e., to grasp and move an object from one position to another).
The criterion c reflects a general tendency to use one of the two response keys, thus a value of 0 indicates neutral bias.
A value of 0 indicates an inability to distinguish signal from no signal, whereas larger values indicate a correspondingly greater ability to distinguish signal from noise.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are thankful to E.Z., E. A. D., G. G., A. G., G. F., D. C., V. S., and B. D. for their participation as models in the study. The study was supported from a grant of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (FAR2014) to Cristina Iani.
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FC conceived the experiment, created the stimuli, designed and performed the experiment, analyzed the data, discussed the results and wrote the manuscript. IC and AM collected, analyzed and discussed the kinematic results. SR discussed and interpreted the behavioral results. CI conceived the experiment, discussed and interpreted the results, and wrote the manuscript. All authors reviewed the manuscript.
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The manuscript does not report clinical studies or patient data. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards (2008, 2013). The study fulfilled the ethical standard procedure recommended by the Italian Association of Psychology (AIP). It was approved by the Department of Communication and Economics of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia.
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Ciardo, F., Campanini, I., Merlo, A. et al. The role of perspective in discriminating between social and non-social intentions from reach-to-grasp kinematics. Psychological Research 82, 915–928 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-017-0868-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-017-0868-4