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Orthogonal-compatibility effects confound automatic imitation: implications for measuring self–other distinction

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Abstract

Accurate distinction between self and other representations is fundamental to a range of social cognitive capacities, and understanding individual differences in this ability is an important aim for psychological research. This demands accurate measures of self–other distinction (SOD). The present study examined an experimental paradigm employed frequently to measure SOD in the action domain; specifically, we evaluated the rotated finger-action stimuli used increasingly to measure automatic imitation (AI). To assess the suitability of these stimuli, we compared AI elicited by different action stimuli to the performance on a perspective-taking task believed to measure SOD in the perception domain. In two separate experiments we reveal three important findings: firstly, we demonstrate a strong confounding influence of orthogonal-compatibility effects on AI elicited by certain rotated stimuli. Second, we demonstrate the potential for this confounding influence to mask important relationships between AI and other measures of SOD; we observed a relationship between AI and perspective-taking performance only when the former was measured in isolation of orthogonality compatibility. Thirdly, we observed a relationship between these two performance measures only in a sub-group of individuals exhibiting a pure form of AI. Furthermore, this relationship revealed a self-bias in SOD—reduced AI was associated with increased egocentric misattributions in perspective taking. Together, our findings identify an important methodological consideration for measures of AI and extend previous research by showing an egocentric style of SOD across action and perception domains.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Joy Deol, Kaitlyn Catoggio, and Hana Kovářová for their efforts in data collection.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Behavioural and Social Neuroscience Research Group, CEITEC-Central European Institute of Technology, Masaryk University, Kamenice 5, 625 00, Brno, Czech Republic

    Daniel Joel Shaw & Kristína Czekóová

  2. Institute of Psychology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Brno, Czech Republic

    Kristína Czekóová

  3. Department of Psychology, Farmingdale State College, Farmingdale, NY, USA

    Michaela Porubanová

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  1. Daniel Joel Shaw
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  2. Kristína Czekóová
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  3. Michaela Porubanová
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Correspondence to Daniel Joel Shaw.

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Informed consent was obtained from all subjects prior to their participation. All procedures performed in this study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Ethical Review Board of Farmingdale State College and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Funding

This work was funded partly by the project “CEITEC 2020 (LQ1601)” with financial support from the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic under the National Sustainability Programme II; and project no. GA15-16738S from the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR).

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The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

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Shaw, D.J., Czekóová, K. & Porubanová, M. Orthogonal-compatibility effects confound automatic imitation: implications for measuring self–other distinction. Psychological Research 81, 1152–1165 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-016-0814-x

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