Attention modulates the specificity of automatic imitation to human actors
Open accessAbstract
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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Previous findings from the authors' lab showed that imitative compatibility effects were attenuated or eliminated by perturbing the naturalness of the stimulus, whereas spatial compatibility was not affected by these perturbations.
“This result was foreshadowed by previous findings in our lab revealing that imitative compatibility effects were attenuated or eliminated by perturbing the naturalness of the stimulus, whereas spatial compatibility was not affected by these perturbations (Longo et al., 2008;Longo & Bertenthal, 2009).”
From Is automatic imitation a specialized form of stimulus–response compatibility? Dissociating imitative and spatial compatibilities (2012) · cites this paper as Longo & Bertenthal, 2009
The Results report that drawing attention to a virtual hand’s artificiality reduced automatic imitation from 11 ms to 4 ms, but did not eliminate it. The Design states that the stimuli were spatially compatible in both anatomical-compatibility conditions; this paper does not establish that a separate spatial-compatibility effect was unaffected by the manipulation. Page numbers are unavailable in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.88)
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- Authors
- Longo, M. R., & Bertenthal, B. I.
- Affiliations
- University College London (GB)
- Indiana University Bloomington (US)
- Corresponding author
- Longo, Matthew R.
- Venue
- Experimental Brain Research
- Published
- 2008-11-26
- Volume
- 192
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 739-744
- ISSN
- 0014-4819 (ISSN-L)
- 1432-1106
- OpenAlex
- W2118975543
- Cited by
- 85
- References
- 4
- Citations by year
- 2025: 1 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 4 · 2016: 3 · 2015: 11 · 2014: 7 · 2013: 7 · 2012: 10
- FWCI
- 6.69
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- other-oa
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Experimental Brain Research (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- BIROn (Birkbeck, University of London) (acceptedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (0202337, 0116293)
- University of Chicago
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Action Observation and Synchronization
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Robot Interaction and HRI
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Motor Control and Adaptation
- Keywords
- automatic imitation, action observation, attention, human bias, virtual hand, action perception, motor system, perceptual salience
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Analysis of Variance, Attention, Female, Hand, Humans, Imitative Behavior, Male, Reaction Time, Software, Task Performance and Analysis, Visual Perception, Statistics, Nonparametric, Young Adult
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