title: Linking differences in action perception with differences in action execution.
abstract: Successful human social interactions depend upon the transmission of verbal and non-verbal signals from one individual to another. Non-verbal social communication is realized through our ability to read and understand information present in other people's actions. It has been proposed that employing the same motor programs, we use to execute an action when observing the same action underlies this action understanding. The main prediction of this framework is that action perception should be strongly correlated with parameters of action execution. Here, we demonstrate that subjects' sensitivity to observed movement speeds is dependent upon how quickly they themselves executed the observed action. This result is consistent with the motor theory of social cognition and suggests that failures in non-verbal social interactions between individuals may in part result from differences in how those individuals move.
authors.affiliation: Sobell Department of Motor Neuroscience and Movement Disorders, UCL Institute of Neurology, London, WC1N 3BG, UK, Department of Neuroscience and Sense Organs, University of Bari, Bari, Italy, and.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Macerollo
authors.affiliation: Sobell Department of Motor Neuroscience and Movement Disorders, UCL Institute of Neurology, London, WC1N 3BG, UK.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bose
authors.affiliation: Sobell Department of Motor Neuroscience and Movement Disorders, UCL Institute of Neurology, London, WC1N 3BG, UK, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of Messina, Messina, Italy.
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Ricciardi
authors.affiliation: Sobell Department of Motor Neuroscience and Movement Disorders, UCL Institute of Neurology, London, WC1N 3BG, UK.
authors.forename: M J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Edwards
authors.affiliation: Sobell Department of Motor Neuroscience and Movement Disorders, UCL Institute of Neurology, London, WC1N 3BG, UK, j.kilner@ucl.ac.uk.
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Kilner
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology; D003071:Cognition; D003142:Communication; D004421:Dystonia / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009068:Movement / Q000502:physiology*; D009069:Movement Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology; D009633:Nonverbal Communication; D019370:Observation; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D012919:Social Behavior; D012938:Social Perception; D014202:Tremor / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: action observation; action perception; mirror neurons; movement disorders; perception deficits