Social modulation of object-directed but not image-directed actions

There has recently been an increased research focus on the influence of social factors on human cognition, attention, and action. While this represents an important step towards an ecologically valid description of real-world behaviour, this work has primarily examined dyads interacting with virtual stimuli i.e. on-screen images of objects. Though differences between actions to images and real items are known, their relative sensitivity to social factors is largely unknown. We argue that because images and real items elicit different neural representations, patterns of attention, and hand actions, a direct comparison between the magnitude of social effects while interacting with images and real objects is demanded. We examined patterns of reaching as individuals performed a shape-matching game. Images and real objects were used as stimuli, and social context was manipulated via the proximity of an observer. We found that social context interacted with stimulus type to modulate behaviour. Specifically, there was a delay in reaching for distant objects when a participant was facing another individual but this social effect only occurred when the stimuli were real objects. Our data suggest that even when images and real objects are arranged to share the affordance of reachability, they differ in their sensitivity to social influences. Therefore, the measurement of social effects using on-screen stimuli may poorly predict the social effects of actions directed towards real objects. Accordingly, generalizations between these two domains should be treated with caution.