Movement observation affects movement execution in a simple response task.
The present study was designed to examine the hypothesis that stimulus-response arrangements with high ideomotor compatibility lead to substantial compatibility effects even in simple response tasks. In Experiment 1, participants executed pre-instructed finger movements in response to compatible and incompatible finger movements. A pronounced reaction time advantage was found for compatible as compared to incompatible trials. Experiment 2 revealed a much smaller compatibility effect for less ideomotor-compatible object movements compared to finger movements. Experiment 3 presented normal stimuli (hand upright) and flipped stimuli (hand upside-down). Two components were found to contribute to the compatibility effect, a dynamic spatial compatibility component (related to movement directions) and an ideomotor component (related to movement types). The implications of these results for theories about stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) as well as for theories about imitation are discussed.
Department of Neurology, Max Planck Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience, Stephanstr. 1A, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany. brass@cns.mpg.de
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D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009039:Motion Perception; D009068:Movement / Q000502:physiology*; D011582:Psychological Theory; D011930:Reaction Time; D014796:Visual Perception