title: To imitate or not to imitate? How the brain can do it, that is the question!
abstract: In this paper the authors discuss the most prominent views addressing the issue of how we imitate actions. It is argued that the existing theories lay along a continuum, with the direct mapping approach at one end (Butterworth, 1990; Gray, Neisser, Shapiro, & Kouns, 1991) the Active Intermodal Matching approach (Melzoff & Moore, 1997) in the middle, and the goal-directed theory (Bekkering, Wohlshäger, & Gattis, 2000) and the dual route theory (Rumiati & Tessari, 2002) at the opposite end. Interestingly the latter views can account for behaviors that cannot be explained by invoking the direct mapping or the Active Intermodal Matching approach.
authors.affiliation: Programme in Neuroscience, Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati, Trieste, Italy. rumiati@sissa.it
authors.forename: Raffaella Ida
authors.initials: RI
authors.lastname: Rumiati
authors.forename: Harold
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Bekkering
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D007100:Imitative Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology