Action Recognition Depends on Observer’s Level of Action Control and Social Personality Traits

Humans recognize both the movement (physical) goals and action (conceptual) goals of individuals with whom they are interacting. Here, we assessed whether spontaneous recognition of others’ goals depends on whether the observers control their own behavior at the movement or action level. We also examined the relationship between individual differences in empathy and ASD-like traits, and the processing of other individual’s movement and action goals that are known to be encoded in the “mirroring” and “mentalizing” brain networks. In order to address these questions, we used a computer-based card paradigm that made it possible to independently manipulate movement and action congruency of observed and executed actions. In separate blocks, participants were instructed to select either the right or left card (movement-control condition) or the higher or lower card (action-control condition), while we manipulated action- and movement-congruency of both actors’ goals. An action-congruency effect was present in all conditions and the size of this effect was significantly correlated with self-reported empathy and ASD-like traits. In contrast, movement-congruency effects were only present in the movement-control block and were strongly dependent on action-congruency. These results illustrate that spontaneous recognition of others’ behavior depends on the control scheme that is currently adopted by the observer. The findings suggest that deficits in action recognition are related to abnormal synthesis of perceived movements and prior conceptual knowledge that are associated with activations in the “mirroring” and “mentalizing” cortical networks.