Putting motor resonance in perspective

On my right or on your left? Spontaneous spatial perspective taking in blind people

Spatial perspective taking is a human ability that permits to assume another person's spatial viewpoint. Data show that spatial perspective taking might arise even spontaneously by the mere presence of another person in the environment. We investigated whether this phenomenon is observable also in blind people. Blind and blindfolded sighted participants explored a tridimensional tactile map and memorized the localization of different landmarks. Then, after the presentation of sounds coming from three landmarks-positioned on the right, on the left, and in front-participants had to indicate the reciprocal position of the two lateral landmarks. Results showed that when the sound coming from the frontal landmark suggested the presence of a speaking (voice) or moving person (footsteps), several blind and sighted people adopted this person's perspective. These findings suggest that auditory stimuli can trigger spontaneous spatial perspective taking in sighted as well as in blind people.

Sentence plausibility influences the link between action words and the perception of biological human movements

The present study aimed to assess the role of sentence plausibility in the functional link between action words and visual judgments of point-light human actions. Following the oral presentation of action verbs included in a plausible or implausible sentence, participants were asked to detect the presence of congruent or incongruent biological movements. Sentence plausibility was manipulated by inverting the positions of the subject and the complement (e.g., the neighbor is running in the garden vs the garden is running in the neighbor). The results showed that for both plausible and implausible sentences, the detection of human movements is greater following presentation of congruent action verbs. These results suggest that the presentation of action verbs affects the subsequent perception of point-light human movements, regardless of the associated semantic context. However, the link between action verbs and judgment of biological movements is strengthened when plausible sentences are presented, as illustrated by the increase in visual detection capacity in plausible congruent conditions. Concerning the analysis of the detection speed, the performance is only affected in plausible sentences with slower response times associated with the presentation of an incongruent action verb. These findings are discussed in light of an embodied mechanism and the domain of biological movement perception.

The cultural side of science communication

The main proposition of this paper is that science communication necessarily involves and includes cultural orientations. There is a substantial body of work showing that cultural differences in values and epistemological frameworks are paralleled with cultural differences reflected in artifacts and public representations. One dimension of cultural difference is the psychological distance between humans and the rest of nature. Another is perspective taking and attention to context and relationships. As an example of distance, most (Western) images of ecosystems do not include human beings, and European American discourse tends to position human beings as being apart from nature. Native American discourse, in contrast, tends to describe humans beings as a part of nature. We trace the correspondences between cultural properties of media, focusing on children's books, and cultural differences in biological cognition. Finally, implications for both science communication and science education are outlined.

Walking on a line: a motor paradigm using rotation and reflection symmetry to study mental body transformations

Researchers have recently reintroduced the own-body in the center of the social interaction theory. From the discovery of the mirror neurons in the ventral premotor cortex of the monkey's brain, a human embodied model of interindividual relationship based on simulation processes has been advanced, according to which we tend to embody spontaneously the other individuals' behavior when interacting. Although the neurocognitive mechanisms of the embodiment process have started being described, the mechanisms of self-location during embodiment are still less known. Here, we designed a motor paradigm which allows investigating in ecologically more valid conditions whether we embody another person's intransitive action with an embodied or disembodied self-location. Accordingly, we propose a phenomenological model of self-other interaction showing how perspective-taking mechanisms may relate on mental body transformation and offering a promising way to investigate the different sorts of intersubjectivity.