Liepelt Roman, Cramon D Yves Von, Brass Marcel
Department of Cognitive Neurology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.
J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 2008 Jun;34(3):578-91. doi: 10.1037/0096-1523.34.3.578.
Converging evidence has shown that action observation and execution are tightly linked. The observation of an action directly activates an equivalent internal motor representation in the observer (direct matching). However, whether direct matching is primarily driven by basic perceptual features of the observed movement or is influenced by more abstract interpretative processes is an open question. A series of behavioral experiments tested whether direct matching, as measured by motor priming, can be modulated by inferred action goals and attributed intentions. Experiment 1 tested whether observing an unsuccessful attempt to execute an action is sufficient to produce a motor-priming effect. Experiment 2 tested alternative perceptual explanations for the observed findings. Experiment 3 investigated whether the attribution of intention modulates motor priming by comparing motor-priming effects during observation of intended and unintended movements. Experiment 4 tested whether participants' interpretation of the movement as triggered by an external source or the actor's intention modulates the motor-priming effect by a pure instructional manipulation. Our findings support a model in which direct matching can be top-down modulated by the observer's interpretation of the observed movement as intended or not.
越来越多的证据表明，动作观察与执行紧密相连。对动作的观察会直接在观察者体内激活一个等效的内部运动表征（直接匹配）。然而，直接匹配主要是由所观察到的运动的基本感知特征驱动，还是受更抽象的解释过程影响，这仍是一个悬而未决的问题。一系列行为实验测试了以运动启动来衡量的直接匹配是否会受到推断出的动作目标和归因意图的调节。实验1测试了观察一次执行动作的未成功尝试是否足以产生运动启动效应。实验2测试了对观察结果的其他感知解释。实验3通过比较观察有意和无意动作时的运动启动效应，研究了意图归因是否会调节运动启动。实验4通过纯粹的指令操作，测试了参与者将动作解释为由外部源还是行为者意图触发是否会调节运动启动效应。我们的研究结果支持这样一种模型，即直接匹配可以由观察者对所观察到的动作是否有意的解释进行自上而下的调节。
