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Social Motor Priming: when offline interference facilitates motor execution

Many daily activities involve synchronizing with other people’s actions. Previous literature has revealed that a slowdown of performance occurs whenever the action to be carried out is different to the one observed (i.e., visuomotor interference). However, action execution can be facilitated by obse...

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Autores principales: Betti, Sonia, Chinellato, Eris, Guerra, Silvia, Castiello, Umberto, Sartori, Luisa
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6786249/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31608173
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.7796
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author Betti, Sonia
Chinellato, Eris
Guerra, Silvia
Castiello, Umberto
Sartori, Luisa
author_facet Betti, Sonia
Chinellato, Eris
Guerra, Silvia
Castiello, Umberto
Sartori, Luisa
author_sort Betti, Sonia
collection PubMed
description Many daily activities involve synchronizing with other people’s actions. Previous literature has revealed that a slowdown of performance occurs whenever the action to be carried out is different to the one observed (i.e., visuomotor interference). However, action execution can be facilitated by observing a different action if it calls for an interactive gesture (i.e., social motor priming). The aim of this study is to investigate the costs and benefits of spontaneously processing a social response and then executing the same or a different action. Participants performed two different types of grips, which could be either congruent or not with the socially appropriate response and with the observed action. In particular, participants performed a precision grip (PG; thumb-index fingers opposition) or a whole-hand grasp (WHG; fingers-palm opposition) after observing videos showing an actor performing a PG and addressing them (interactive condition) or not (non-interactive condition). Crucially, in the interactive condition, the most appropriate response was a WHG, but in 50 percent of trials participants were asked to perform a PG. This procedure allowed us to measure both the facilitator effect of performing an action appropriate to the social context (WHG)—but different with respect to the observed one (PG)—and the cost of inhibiting it. These effects were measured by means of 3-D kinematical analysis of movement. Results show that, in terms of reaction time and movement time, the interactive request facilitated (i.e., speeded) the socially appropriate action (WHG), whereas interfered with (i.e., delayed) a different action (PG), although observed actions were always PGs. This interference also manifested with an increase of maximum grip aperture, which seemingly reflects the concurrent representation of the socially appropriate response. Overall, these findings extend previous research by revealing that physically incongruent action representations can be integrated into a single action plan even during an offline task and without any training.
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spelling pubmed-67862492019-10-11 Social Motor Priming: when offline interference facilitates motor execution Betti, Sonia Chinellato, Eris Guerra, Silvia Castiello, Umberto Sartori, Luisa PeerJ Psychiatry and Psychology Many daily activities involve synchronizing with other people’s actions. Previous literature has revealed that a slowdown of performance occurs whenever the action to be carried out is different to the one observed (i.e., visuomotor interference). However, action execution can be facilitated by observing a different action if it calls for an interactive gesture (i.e., social motor priming). The aim of this study is to investigate the costs and benefits of spontaneously processing a social response and then executing the same or a different action. Participants performed two different types of grips, which could be either congruent or not with the socially appropriate response and with the observed action. In particular, participants performed a precision grip (PG; thumb-index fingers opposition) or a whole-hand grasp (WHG; fingers-palm opposition) after observing videos showing an actor performing a PG and addressing them (interactive condition) or not (non-interactive condition). Crucially, in the interactive condition, the most appropriate response was a WHG, but in 50 percent of trials participants were asked to perform a PG. This procedure allowed us to measure both the facilitator effect of performing an action appropriate to the social context (WHG)—but different with respect to the observed one (PG)—and the cost of inhibiting it. These effects were measured by means of 3-D kinematical analysis of movement. Results show that, in terms of reaction time and movement time, the interactive request facilitated (i.e., speeded) the socially appropriate action (WHG), whereas interfered with (i.e., delayed) a different action (PG), although observed actions were always PGs. This interference also manifested with an increase of maximum grip aperture, which seemingly reflects the concurrent representation of the socially appropriate response. Overall, these findings extend previous research by revealing that physically incongruent action representations can be integrated into a single action plan even during an offline task and without any training. PeerJ Inc. 2019-10-07 /pmc/articles/PMC6786249/ /pubmed/31608173 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.7796 Text en ©2019 Betti et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Psychiatry and Psychology
Betti, Sonia
Chinellato, Eris
Guerra, Silvia
Castiello, Umberto
Sartori, Luisa
Social Motor Priming: when offline interference facilitates motor execution
title Social Motor Priming: when offline interference facilitates motor execution
title_full Social Motor Priming: when offline interference facilitates motor execution
title_fullStr Social Motor Priming: when offline interference facilitates motor execution
title_full_unstemmed Social Motor Priming: when offline interference facilitates motor execution
title_short Social Motor Priming: when offline interference facilitates motor execution
title_sort social motor priming: when offline interference facilitates motor execution
topic Psychiatry and Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6786249/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31608173
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.7796
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