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Understanding others’ distal goals from proximal communicative actions

Many social interactions require individuals to coordinate their actions and to inform each other about their goals. Often these goals concern an immediate (i.e., proximal) action, as when people give each other a brief handshake, but they sometimes also refer to a future (i.e. distal) action, as wh...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Dockendorff, Martin, Schmitz, Laura, Vesper, Cordula, Knoblich, Günther
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9858010/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36662700
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0280265
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author Dockendorff, Martin
Schmitz, Laura
Vesper, Cordula
Knoblich, Günther
author_facet Dockendorff, Martin
Schmitz, Laura
Vesper, Cordula
Knoblich, Günther
author_sort Dockendorff, Martin
collection PubMed
description Many social interactions require individuals to coordinate their actions and to inform each other about their goals. Often these goals concern an immediate (i.e., proximal) action, as when people give each other a brief handshake, but they sometimes also refer to a future (i.e. distal) action, as when football players perform a passing sequence. The present study investigates whether observers can derive information about such distal goals by relying on kinematic modulations of an actor’s instrumental actions. In Experiment 1 participants were presented with animations of a box being moved at different velocities towards an apparent endpoint. The distal goal, however, was for the object to be moved past this endpoint, to one of two occluded target locations. Participants then selected the location which they considered the likely distal goal of the action. As predicted, participants were able to detect differences in movement velocity and, based on these differences, systematically mapped the movements to the two distal goal locations. Adding a distal goal led to more variation in the way participants mapped the observed movements onto different target locations. The results of Experiments 2 and 3 indicated that this cannot be explained by difficulties in perceptual discrimination. Rather, the increased variability likely reflects differences in interpreting the underlying connection between proximal communicative actions and distal goals. The present findings extend previous research on sensorimotor communication by demonstrating that communicative action modulations are not restricted to predicting proximal goals but can also be used to infer more distal goals.
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spelling pubmed-98580102023-01-21 Understanding others’ distal goals from proximal communicative actions Dockendorff, Martin Schmitz, Laura Vesper, Cordula Knoblich, Günther PLoS One Research Article Many social interactions require individuals to coordinate their actions and to inform each other about their goals. Often these goals concern an immediate (i.e., proximal) action, as when people give each other a brief handshake, but they sometimes also refer to a future (i.e. distal) action, as when football players perform a passing sequence. The present study investigates whether observers can derive information about such distal goals by relying on kinematic modulations of an actor’s instrumental actions. In Experiment 1 participants were presented with animations of a box being moved at different velocities towards an apparent endpoint. The distal goal, however, was for the object to be moved past this endpoint, to one of two occluded target locations. Participants then selected the location which they considered the likely distal goal of the action. As predicted, participants were able to detect differences in movement velocity and, based on these differences, systematically mapped the movements to the two distal goal locations. Adding a distal goal led to more variation in the way participants mapped the observed movements onto different target locations. The results of Experiments 2 and 3 indicated that this cannot be explained by difficulties in perceptual discrimination. Rather, the increased variability likely reflects differences in interpreting the underlying connection between proximal communicative actions and distal goals. The present findings extend previous research on sensorimotor communication by demonstrating that communicative action modulations are not restricted to predicting proximal goals but can also be used to infer more distal goals. Public Library of Science 2023-01-20 /pmc/articles/PMC9858010/ /pubmed/36662700 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0280265 Text en © 2023 Dockendorff 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, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Dockendorff, Martin
Schmitz, Laura
Vesper, Cordula
Knoblich, Günther
Understanding others’ distal goals from proximal communicative actions
title Understanding others’ distal goals from proximal communicative actions
title_full Understanding others’ distal goals from proximal communicative actions
title_fullStr Understanding others’ distal goals from proximal communicative actions
title_full_unstemmed Understanding others’ distal goals from proximal communicative actions
title_short Understanding others’ distal goals from proximal communicative actions
title_sort understanding others’ distal goals from proximal communicative actions
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9858010/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36662700
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0280265
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