Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Independent Junior Research Group Body & Self, Leipzig, Germany.
Conscious Cogn. 2010 Mar;19(1):98-106. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2009.12.014. Epub 2010 Jan 29.
Ideomotor theory of human action control proposes that activation of a motor representation can occur either through internally-intended or externally-perceived actions. Critically, sometimes these alternatives of eliciting a motor response may be conflicting, for example, when intending one action and perceiving another, necessitating the recruitment of enhanced action-control to avoid motor mimicry. Based on previous neuroimaging evidence, suggesting that reduced mimicry is associated with self-related processing, we aimed to experimentally enhance these action-control mechanisms during motor contagion by inducing self-focus. In two within-subjects experiments, participants had to enforce their action intention against an external motor contagion tendency under heightened and normal self-focus. During high self-focus participants showed reduced motor mimicry, induced either by mirror self-observation or self-referential judgments. This indicates that a self-focus provoking situation can enhance online action-control mechanisms, needed to resist unintentional motor contagion tendencies and thereby enables a modulation of automatic mirroring responses.
人类动作控制的意念运动理论提出，运动表象的激活既可以通过内部意图的动作，也可以通过外部感知的动作来实现。关键是，有时这些引发运动反应的选择可能会相互冲突，例如，当意图执行一个动作而感知到另一个动作时，就需要增强动作控制来避免运动模仿。基于先前的神经影像学证据表明，模仿的减少与自我相关的加工有关，我们旨在通过诱发自我关注来在运动感染过程中实验性地增强这些动作控制机制。在两个被试内实验中，参与者必须在增强和正常的自我关注下，对抗外部的运动感染倾向来执行他们的动作意图。在高自我关注下，参与者表现出较少的运动模仿，这种模仿可以通过镜像自我观察或自我参照判断来诱导。这表明，自我关注引发的情境可以增强在线动作控制机制，从而抵抗无意识的运动感染倾向，并由此调节自动镜像反应。
