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Acting in perspective: the role of body and language as social tools

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Abstract

We investigated how the reach-to-grasp movement is influenced by the presence of another person (friend or non-friend), who was either invisible (behind) or located in different positions with respect to an object and to the agent, and by the perspective conveyed by linguistic pronouns (“I”, “You”). The interaction between social relationship and relative position influenced the latency of both maximal fingers aperture and velocity peak, showing shorter latencies in the presence of a non-friend than in the presence of a friend. However, whereas the relative position of a non-friend did not affect the kinematics of the movement, the position of a friend mattered: latencies were significantly shorter with friends only in positions allowing them to easily reach for the object. Finally, the investigation of the overall reaching movement time showed an interaction between the speaker and the pronoun: participants reached the object more quickly when the other spoke, particularly if she used the “I” pronoun. This suggests that speaking, and particularly using the “I” pronoun, evokes a potential action. Implications of the results for embodied cognition are discussed.

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Acknowledgments

The first two authors contributed equally, and the order of their names was randomly selected. The first two authors designed the experiment, conducted the experiment, analyzed the data and wrote the paper. The third author designed the experiment and wrote the paper. This work was supported by the European Community, project ROSSI: Emergence of communication in RObots through Sensorimotor and Social Interaction (Grant agreement n. 216125).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, Viale Berti Pichat, 5, 40100, Bologna, Italy

    Claudia Gianelli, Claudia Scorolli & Anna M. Borghi

  2. Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, National Research Council, Rome, Italy

    Anna M. Borghi

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  1. Claudia Gianelli
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  2. Claudia Scorolli
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  3. Anna M. Borghi
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Correspondence to Claudia Gianelli, Claudia Scorolli or Anna M. Borghi.

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Gianelli, C., Scorolli, C. & Borghi, A.M. Acting in perspective: the role of body and language as social tools. Psychological Research 77, 40–52 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-011-0401-0

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