Abstract
The perception of actions performed by others activates one’s own motor system. Recent studies disagree as to whether this effect is specific to actions performed by other humans, an issue complicated by differences in perceptual salience between human and non-human stimuli. We addressed this issue by examining the automatic imitation of actions stimulated by viewing a virtual, computer-generated, hand. This stimulus was held constant across conditions, but participants’ attention to the virtualness of the hand was manipulated by informing some participants during instructions that they would see a “computer-generated model of a hand,” while making no mention of this to others. In spite of this attentional manipulation, participants in both conditions were generally aware of the virtualness of the hand. Nevertheless, automatic imitation of the virtual hand was significantly reduced––but not eliminated––when participants were told they would see a virtual hand. These results demonstrate that attention modulates the “human bias” of automatic imitation to non-human actors.
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Notes
As participants in the virtual only condition received twice as many virtual hand trails as other participants, an additional analysis was conducted randomly selecting half the trials in each condition for those participants. Consistent with the above analysis, there was a significant main effect of compatibility, F(1,116) = 33.34, p < 0.0001, with faster RT in compatible (308 ms) than incompatible (316 ms) trials, and a significant interaction of compatibility and instructions, F(1,116) = 9.92, p < 0.005, with less automatic imitation when the artificiality of the hand had been mentioned (3 ms) than when it had not (11 ms).
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Acknowledgments
This research was submitted by MRL to the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago in partial fulfilment of the requirements of a doctoral degree. This research was supported by grants SBE9704764 and BCS0116293 from the National Science Foundation to BIB, and predoctoral fellowship award DGE-0202337 from the National Science Foundation to MRL. Thanks to Dale Mertes and the University of Chicago Digital Media Lab for assistance with creating the virtual hand stimulus, and Sian Beilock, Jean Decety, and Janellen Huttenlocher for helpful discussion.
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Longo, M.R., Bertenthal, B.I. Attention modulates the specificity of automatic imitation to human actors. Exp Brain Res 192, 739–744 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-008-1649-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-008-1649-5