Anticipated imitation of multiple agents

It is well-established that people tend to mimic one another's actions, a crucial aspect of social interactions. Anticipating imitation has been shown to boost motor activation and reaction times for congruent actions. However, prior research predominantly focused on dyads, leaving gaps in our knowledge regarding group dynamics. This study addresses this gap, conducting three experiments using extensive online data. Participants engaged in anticipated imitation tasks with one versus three virtual agents. The results across all three experiments (n = 77; n = 239; n = 457) consistently support the existence of an anticipated imitation effect, with faster reaction times for congruent actions. Furthermore, the research unveils a social facilitation effect, with participants reacting more swiftly when anticipating three agents compared to one. However, we did not find the expected increase of the congruency effect with multiple agents; rather, the data indicates that anticipating multiple agents instead decreases this effect. These findings are discussed within the framework of ideomotor theory, offering insights into how they relate to recent research on the automatic imitation of multiple agents.

Impact of online live broadcasts on environmental destructive behavioral intention

As information and communication technology advances rapidly, real-time live online broadcasting has emerged as a novel social media platform. In particular, live online broadcasts have gained widespread popularity among audiences. However, this process can cause environmental problems. When audiences imitate live content and perform similar field activities, it can have a negative effect on the environment. In this study, an extended theory of planned behavior (TPB) was used to explore how online live broadcasts relate to environmental damage from the perspective of human behavior. A total of 603 valid responses were collected from a questionnaire survey, and a regression analysis was conducted to verify the hypotheses. The findings showed that the TPB can be applied to account for the formation mechanism of behavioral intention of field activities caused by online live broadcasts. The mediating effect of imitation was verified using the above relationship. These findings are expected to provide a practical reference for the control of online live broadcast content and guidance on public environmental behavior.

Perception and action as viewed from the Theory of Event Coding: a multi-lab replication and effect size estimation of common experimental designs

The Theory of Event Coding (TEC) has influenced research on action and perception across the past two decades. It integrates several seminal empirical phenomena and it has continued to stimulate novel experimental approaches on the representational foundations of action control and perceptual experience. Yet, many of the most notable results surrounding TEC originate from an era of psychological research that relied on rather small sample sizes as judged by today's standards. This state hampers future research aiming to build on previous phenomena. We, therefore, provide a multi-lab re-assessment of the following six classical observations: response-effect compatibility, action-induced blindness, response-effect learning, stimulus-response binding, code occupation, and short-term response-effect binding. Our major goal is to provide precise estimates of corresponding effect sizes to facilitate future scientific endeavors. These effect sizes turned out to be considerably smaller than in the original reports, thus allowing for informed decisions on how to address each phenomenon in future work. Of note, the most relevant results of the original observations were consistently obtained in the present experiments as well.

A systematic review of handover actions in human dyads

Introduction

Handover actions are joint actions in which an object is passed from one actor to another. In order to carry out a smooth handover action, precise coordination of both actors' movements is of critical importance. This requires the synchronization of both the kinematics of the reaching movement and the grip forces of the two actors during the interaction. Psychologists, for example, may be interested in studying handover actions in order to identify the cognitive mechanisms underlying the interaction of two partners. In addition, robotic engineers may utilize insights from sensorimotor information processing in human handover as models for the design controllers in robots in hybrid (human-robot) interaction scenarios. To date, there is little knowledge transfer between researchers in different disciplines and no common framework or language for the study of handover actions.

Methods

For this reason, we systematically reviewed the literature on human-human handover actions in which at least one of the two types of behavioral data, kinematics or grip force, was measured.

Results

Nine relevant studies were identified. The different methodologies and results of the individual studies are here described and contextualized.

Discussion

Based on these results, a common framework is suggested that, provides a distinct and straightforward language and systematics for use in future studies. We suggest to term the actors as giver and receiver, as well as to subdivide the whole action into four phases: (1) Reach and grasp, (2) object transport, (3) object transfer, and (4) end of handover to comprehensively and clearly describe the handover action. The framework aims to foster the necessary exchange between different scientific disciplines to promote research on handover actions. Overall, the results support the assumption that givers adapt their executions according to the receiver's intentions, that the start of the release of the object is processed feedforward and that the release process is feedback-controlled in the transfer phase. We identified the action planning of the receiver as a research gap.

When Corticospinal Inhibition Favors an Efficient Motor Response

Many daily activities involve responding to the actions of other people. However, the functional relationship between the motor preparation and execution phases still needs to be clarified. With the combination of different and complementary experimental techniques (i.e., motor excitability measures, reaction times, electromyography, and dyadic 3-D kinematics), we investigated the behavioral and neurophysiological signatures characterizing different stages of a motor response in contexts calling for an interactive action. Participants were requested to perform an action (i.e., stirring coffee or lifting a coffee cup) following a co-experimenter's request gesture. Another condition, in which a non-interactive gesture was used, was also included. Greater corticospinal inhibition was found when participants prepared their motor response after observing an interactive request, compared to a non-interactive gesture. This, in turn, was associated with faster and more efficient action execution in kinematic terms (i.e., a social motor priming effect). Our results provide new insights on the inhibitory and facilitatory drives guiding social motor response generation. Altogether, the integration of behavioral and neurophysiological indexes allowed us to demonstrate that a more efficient action execution followed a greater corticospinal inhibition. These indexes provide a full picture of motor activity at both planning and execution stages.

Social Action Effects: Representing Predicted Partner Responses in Social Interactions

The sociomotor framework outlines a possible role of social action effects on human action control, suggesting that anticipated partner reactions are a major cue to represent, select, and initiate own body movements. Here, we review studies that elucidate the actual content of social action representations and that explore factors that can distinguish action control processes involving social and inanimate action effects. Specifically, we address two hypotheses on how the social context can influence effect-based action control: first, by providing unique social features such as body-related, anatomical codes, and second, by orienting attention towards any relevant feature dimensions of the action effects. The reviewed empirical work presents a surprisingly mixed picture: while there is indirect evidence for both accounts, previous studies that directly addressed the anatomical account showed no signs of the involvement of genuinely social features in sociomotor action control. Furthermore, several studies show evidence against the differentiation of social and non-social action effect processing, portraying sociomotor action representations as remarkably non-social. A focus on enhancing the social experience in future studies should, therefore, complement the current database to establish whether such settings give rise to the hypothesized influence of social context.

Processing and utilization of auditory action effects in individual and social tasks

The influence of action-effect integration on motor control and sensory processing is often investigated in arrangements featuring human-machine interactions. Such experiments focus on predictable sensory events produced through participants' interactions with simple response devices. Action-effect integration may, however, also occur when we interact with human partners. The current study examined the similarities and differences in perceptual and motor control processes related to generating sounds with or without the involvement of a human partner. We manipulated the complexity of the causal chain of events between the initial motor and the final sensory event. In the self-induced condition participants generated sounds directly by pressing a button, while in the interactive condition sounds resulted from a paired reaction-time task, that is, the final sound was generated indirectly, by relying on the contribution of the partner. Auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) and force application patterns were similar in the two conditions, suggesting that social action effects produced with the involvement of a second human agent in the causal sequence are processed, and utilized as action feedback in the same way as direct consequences of one's actions. The only reflection of a processing difference between the two conditions was a slow, posterior ERP waveform that started before the presentation of the auditory stimulus, which may reflect differences in stimulus expectancy or task difficulty.

Partial repetition between action plans delays responses to ideomotor compatible stimuli

Often one must depart from an intended course of events to react to sudden situational demands before resuming his or her original action retained in working memory. Retaining an action plan in working memory (WM) can delay or facilitate the execution of an intervening action when the action features of the two action plans partly overlap (partial repetition) compared to when they do not overlap. We investigated whether partial repetition costs (PRCs) or benefits (PRBs) occur when the intervening event is an ideomotor-compatible stimulus that is a biological representation of the response required by the participant. Participants viewed two visual events and retained an action plan to the first event (A) while executing a speeded response to the second, intervening event (B). In Experiment 1A, the two visual events were ideomotor compatible, non-ideomotor compatible (abstract), or one was ideomotor compatible, and the other abstract. Results showed PRCs for all event A-B stimulus combinations with reduced PRCs for intervening, ideomotor compatible events. In contrast to previous research, there was no evidence that ideomotor-compatible actions were automatic and bypassed the selection bottleneck. Experiment 1B confirmed PRCs for ideomotor compatible stimuli that more accurately mimicked the required response. Findings suggest that mechanisms for activating, selecting, and retaining action plans are similar between ideomotor compatible and abstract visual events. We conclude that PRCs occur in response to intervening events when action plans are generated offline and rely on WM, including those for ideomotor-compatible stimuli; but PRBs may be restricted to actions generated online. This conclusion is consistent with the perceptual-motor framework by Goodale and Milner (Trends in Neuroscience 15:22-25, 1992).

Item-Specificity and Intention in Episodic Memory

Schmidt et al.'s (2020) PEP model accurately reflects the complexity of task switching based on bottom-up assumptions and episodic memory, re-evaluating the contribution of commonly presumed top-down processes. Extending it to long-term bindings and their item-specific effects could eludicate puzzling findings regarding the independence of long-term bindings between stimuli, responses, and task-specific categorizations as well as the relation between short-term and long-term bindings. Moreover, ideomotor theories of action control provide a bottom-up basis of incorporating volition and intentional action into the PEP model which is currently restricted to stimulus-based action.

Imitation of action-effects increases social affiliation

Imitating someone’s actions influences social-affective evaluations and motor performance for the action model and the imitator alike. Both phenomena are explained by the similarity between the sensory and motor representations of the action. Importantly, however, theoretical accounts of action control hold that actions are represented in terms of their sensory effects, which encompass features of the movement but also features of an action’s consequence in the outside world. This suggests that social-affective consequences of imitation should not be limited to situations in which the imitator copies the model’s body movements. Rather, the present study tested whether copying the perceived action-effects of another person without imitating the eventual body movements increases the social-affective evaluation of this person. In three experiments, participants produced visual action-effects while observing videos of models who performed either the same or a different movement and produced either the same or a different action-effect. If instructions framed the action in terms of the movement, participants preferred models with similar movements (Experiment 1). However, if instructions framed the action in terms of the to-be produced action-effect in the environment, participants preferred models with similar action-effects (Experiments 2 and 3). These results extend effect-based accounts of action control like the ideomotor framework and suggest a close link between action control and affective processing in social interactions.

Anticipation in sociomotor actions: Similar effects for in- and outgroup interactions

In social interactions, own actions often trigger a particular response from another person. The sociomotor framework proposes that this consistent behavior of others can become incorporated into own action control. In line with this idea, recent studies have shown that own motor actions are facilitated if they are predictably being imitated rather than counterimitated by a social interaction partner. In the present study, we investigated whether this finding is influenced by the relationship between the interacting persons. To that end, we manipulated whether a participant was being imitated and counterimitated by an ingroup or by an outgroup member. In two experiments, we found a beneficial influence of being imitated irrespective of group membership. The results suggest that, while people incorporated their partner's behavior into own action control, this was not further qualified by group membership as a higher-order social variable. This finding points to a universal account of action control for actions with social action effects and actions with inanimate action effects alike.

On the ball: Short-term consequences of movement fakes

In competitive situations, humans sometimes use fake actions. Fake actions are carried out to pretend a certain action goal, which however is not actually pursued, such as pump fakes in basketball, or drop shots in tennis. Here, we studied the short-term consequences of producing or observing fakes on the planning and detection of subsequent fake actions. Two players participated in a game, an attacker and a defender. Attackers had to either throw a ball into a target basket of the defender, or to mimic such a throw without actually throwing. Defenders had to discriminate between real throws and faked throws. Participants changed the roles of attacker and defender, and switched between real and faked throws randomly, on a trial-by-trial basis. We found that the (self-)observation of a fake action facilitated the detection of subsequent fake actions of opponents, but did not facilitate the subsequent planning of own fake actions. We conjecture that previous encounters of fake actions help to focus on the movement aspects that are most diagnostic for such fake actions. As a potential practical consequence, we recommend to not generate multiple fake actions in sports within a short time, to prevent potential short-term perceptual adaptation effects of defenders.

Revisiting intersubjective action-effect binding: No evidence for social moderators

Effect-based accounts of human action control have recently highlighted the possibility of representing one's own actions in terms of anticipated changes in the behavior of social interaction partners. In contrast to action effects that pertain to the agent's body or the agent's physical environment, social action effects have been proposed to come with peculiarities inherent to their social nature. Here, we revisit the currently most prominent demonstration of such a peculiarity: the role of eye contact for action-effect learning in social contexts (Sato & Itakura, 2013, Cognition, 127, 383-390). In contrast to the previous demonstration of action-effect learning, a conceptual and a direct replication both yielded evidence for the absence of action-effect learning in the proposed design, irrespective of eye contact. Bayesian statistics supported this claim by demonstrating evidence in favor of the null hypothesis of no effect. These results suggest a limited generalizability of the original findings-for example, due to limitations that are inherent in the proposed study design or due to cultural differences.

Disarming the gunslinger effect: Reaction beats intention for cooperative actions

According to the famous physicist Niels Bohr, gunfights at high noon in Western movies not only captivate the cinema audience but also provide an accurate illustration of a psychophysical law. He suggested that willed actions come with slower movement execution than reactions, and therefore that a film's hero is able to get the upper hand even though the villain normally draws first. A corresponding "gunslinger effect" has been substantiated by empirical studies. Because these studies used a markedly competitive setting, however, it is currently unclear whether the gunslinger effect indeed reflects structural differences between willed actions and reactive movements, or whether it is a by-product of the competitive setting. To obtain bullet-proof evidence for a true reactive advantage, we investigated willed and reactive movements during a cooperative interaction of two participants. A pronounced reactive advantage emerged, indicating that two independent systems indeed control willed and reactive movements.

Robot Faces that Follow Gaze Facilitate Attentional Engagement and Increase Their Likeability

Gaze behavior of humanoid robots is an efficient mechanism for cueing our spatial orienting, but less is known about the cognitive–affective consequences of robots responding to human directional cues. Here, we examined how the extent to which a humanoid robot (iCub) avatar directed its gaze to the same objects as our participants affected engagement with the robot, subsequent gaze-cueing, and subjective ratings of the robot’s characteristic traits. In a gaze-contingent eyetracking task, participants were asked to indicate a preference for one of two objects with their gaze while an iCub avatar was presented between the object photographs. In one condition, the iCub then shifted its gaze toward the object chosen by a participant in 80% of the trials (joint condition) and in the other condition it looked at the opposite object 80% of the time (disjoint condition). Based on the literature in human–human social cognition, we took the speed with which the participants looked back at the robot as a measure of facilitated reorienting and robot-preference, and found these return saccade onset times to be quicker in the joint condition than in the disjoint condition. As indicated by results from a subsequent gaze-cueing tasks, the gaze-following behavior of the robot had little effect on how our participants responded to gaze cues. Nevertheless, subjective reports suggested that our participants preferred the iCub following participants’ gaze to the one with a disjoint attention behavior, rated it as more human-like and as more likeable. Taken together, our findings show a preference for robots who follow our gaze. Importantly, such subtle differences in gaze behavior are sufficient to influence our perception of humanoid agents, which clearly provides hints about the design of behavioral characteristics of humanoid robots in more naturalistic settings.

My mistake? Enhanced error processing for commanded compared to passively observed actions

We often ask other people to carry out actions for us in order to reach our goals. However, these commanded actions may sometimes go awry, and goal attainment is hindered by errors of the following person. Here, we investigated how the commanding person processes these errors of their follower. Because such errors indicate that the original goal of the command is not met, error processing for these actions should be enhanced compared to passively observing another person's actions. Participants thus either commanded another agent to perform one of four key press responses or they passively observed the agent responding. The agent could respond correctly or commit an error in either case. We compared error processing of commanded and passively observed actions using observation-related post-error slowing (oPES) as a behavioral marker and observed-error-related negativity (oN_E /oERN) and observed-error positivity (oP_E ) as electrophysiological markers. Whereas error processing, as measured via the oERN, was similarly pronounced for commanded and observed actions, commanded actions gave rise to stronger oPES and a stronger oP_E . These results suggest that enhanced monitoring is an automatic by-product of commanding another person's actions.

What is a task? An ideomotor perspective

Although multitasking has been the subject of a large number of papers and experiments, the term task is still not well defined. In this opinion paper, we adopt the ideomotor perspective to define the term task and distinguish it from the terms goal and action. In our opinion, actions are movements executed by an actor to achieve a concrete goal. Concrete goals are represented as anticipated sensory consequences that are associated with an action in an ideomotor manner. Concrete goals are nested in a hierarchy of more and more abstract goals, which form the context of the corresponding action. Finally, tasks are depersonalized goals, i.e., goals that should be achieved by someone. However, tasks can be assigned to a specific person or group of persons, either by a third party or by the person or the group of persons themselves. By accepting this assignment, the depersonalized task becomes a personal goal. In our opinion, research on multitasking needs to confine its scope to the analysis of concrete tasks, which result in concrete goals as anticipated sensory consequences of the corresponding action. We further argue that the distinction between dual- and single-tasking is dependent on the subjective conception of the task assignment, the goal representation and previous experience. Finally, we conclude that it is not the tasks, but the performing of the tasks, i.e. the actions that cause costs in multitasking experiments.

A common mechanism behind distractor-response and response-effect binding?

Short-term bindings between responses and events in the environment ensure efficient behavioral control. This notion holds true for two particular types of binding: bindings between responses and response-irrelevant distractor stimuli that are present at the time of responding, and also for bindings between responses and the effects they cause. Although both types of binding have been extensively studied in the past, little is known about their interrelation. In three experiments, we analyzed both types of binding processes in a distractor-response binding design and in a response-effect binding design, which yielded two central findings: (1) Distractor-response binding and response-effect binding effects were observed not only in their native, but also in the corresponding "non-native" design, and (2) a manipulation of retrieval delay affected both types of bindings in a similar way. We suggest that a general and unselective mechanism is responsible for integrating own responses with a large variety of stimuli.

My Command, My Act: Observation Inflation in Face-To-Face Interactions

When observing another agent performing simple actions, these actions are systematically remembered as one’s own after a brief period of time. Such observation inflation has been documented as a robust phenomenon in studies in which participants passively observed videotaped actions. Whether observation inflation also holds for direct, face-to-face interactions is an open question that we addressed in two experiments. In Experiment 1, participants commanded the experimenter to carry out certain actions, and they indeed reported false memories of self-performance in a later memory test. The effect size of this inflation effect was similar to passive observation as confirmed by Experiment 2. These findings suggest that observation inflation might affect action memory in a broad range of real-world interactions.

Contingency and contiguity of imitative behaviour affect social affiliation

Actions of others automatically prime similar responses in an agent's behavioural repertoire. As a consequence, perceived or anticipated imitation facilitates own action control and, at the same time, imitation boosts social affiliation and rapport with others. It has previously been suggested that basic mechanisms of associative learning can account for behavioural effects of imitation, whereas a possible role of associative learning for affiliative processes is poorly understood at present. Therefore, this study examined whether contingency and contiguity, the principles of associative learning, affect also the social effects of imitation. Two experiments yielded evidence in favour of this hypothesis by showing more social affiliation in conditions with high contingency (as compared to low contingency) and in conditions of high contiguity (compared to low contiguity).

Spontaneous adaptation explains why people act faster when being imitated

The human ability to perform joint actions is often attributed to high-level cognitive processes. For example, the finding that action leaders act faster when imitated by their partners has been interpreted as evidence for anticipation of the other's actions (Pfister, Dignath, Hommel, & Kunde, 2013). In two experiments, we showed that a low-level mechanism can account for this finding. Action leaders were faster when imitated than when counterimitated, but only if they could observe their partner's actions (Exp. 1). Crucially, when due to our manipulation the partner's imitative actions became slower than the counterimitative actions, leaders also became slower when they were imitated, and faster when counterimitated (Exp. 2). Our results suggest that spontaneous temporal adaptation is a key mechanism in joint action tasks. We argue for a reconsideration of other phenomena that have traditionally been attributed solely to high-level processes.

Representation and Incorporation of Close Others’ Responses

We propose a new model of social influence, which can occur spontaneously and in the absence of typically assumed motives. We assume that perceivers routinely construct representations of other people’s experiences and responses (beliefs, attitudes, emotions, and behaviors), when observing others’ responses or simulating the responses of unobserved others. Like representations made accessible by priming, these representations may then influence the process that generates perceivers’ own responses, without intention or awareness, especially when there is a strong social connection to the other. We describe evidence for the basic properties and important moderators of this process, which distinguish it from other mechanisms such as informational, normative, or social identity influence. The model offers new perspectives on the role of others’ values in producing cultural differences, the persistence and power of stereotypes, the adaptive reasons for being influenced by others’ responses, and the impact of others’ views about the self.

Ready, Set, Go! Low Anticipatory Response during a Dyadic Task in Infants at High Familial Risk for Autism

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate a host of motor impairments that may share a common developmental basis with ASD core symptoms. School-age children with ASD exhibit particular difficulty with hand-eye coordination and appear to be less sensitive to visual feedback during motor learning. Sensorimotor deficits are observable as early as 6 months of age in children who later develop ASD; yet the interplay of early motor, visual and social skill development in ASD is not well understood. Integration of visual input with motor output is vital for the formation of internal models of action. Such integration is necessary not only to master a wide range of motor skills, but also to imitate and interpret the actions of others. Thus, closer examination of the early development of visual-motor deficits is of critical importance to ASD. In the present study of infants at high risk (HR) and low risk (LR) for ASD, we examined visual-motor coupling, or action anticipation, during a dynamic, interactive ball-rolling activity. We hypothesized that, compared to LR infants, HR infants would display decreased anticipatory response (perception-guided predictive action) to the approaching ball. We also examined visual attention before and during ball rolling to determine whether attention engagement contributed to differences in anticipation. Results showed that LR and HR infants demonstrated context appropriate looking behavior, both before and during the ball's trajectory toward them. However, HR infants were less likely to exhibit context appropriate anticipatory motor response to the approaching ball (moving their arm/hand to intercept the ball) than LR infants. This finding did not appear to be driven by differences in motor skill between risk groups at 6 months of age and was extended to show an atypical predictive relationship between anticipatory behavior at 6 months and preference for looking at faces compared to objects at age 14 months in the HR group.

The self in conflict: actors and agency in the mediated sequential Simon task

Executive control refers to the ability to withstand interference in order to achieve task goals. The effect of conflict adaptation describes that after experiencing interference, subsequent conflict effects are weaker. However, changes in the source of conflict have been found to disrupt conflict adaptation. Previous studies indicated that this specificity is determined by the degree to which one source causes episodic retrieval of a previous source. A virtual reality version of the Simon task was employed to investigate whether changes in a visual representation of the self would similarly affect conflict adaptation. Participants engaged in a mediated Simon task via 3D "avatar" models that either mirrored the participants' movements, or were presented statically. A retrieval cue was implemented as the identity of the avatar: switching it from a male to a female avatar was expected to disrupt the conflict adaptation effect (CAE). The results show that only in static conditions did the CAE depend on the avatar identity, while in dynamic conditions, changes did not cause disruption. We also explored the effect of conflict and adaptation on the degree of movement made with the task-irrelevant hand and replicated the reaction time pattern. The findings add to earlier studies of source-specific conflict adaptation by showing that a visual representation of the self in action can provide a cue that determines episodic retrieval. Furthermore, the novel paradigm is made openly available to the scientific community and is described in its significance for studies of social cognition, cognitive psychology, and human-computer interaction.

Joint response-effect compatibility

When performing jointly on a task, human agents are assumed to represent their coactor's share of this task, and research in various joint action paradigms has focused on representing the coactor's stimulus-response assignments. Here we show that the response-effect (R-E) contingencies exploited by a coactor also affect performance, and thus might be represented as if they were used by oneself. Participants performed an R-E compatibility task, with keypresses producing spatially compatible or incompatible action effects. We did not observe any R-E compatibility effects when the task was performed in isolation (individual go-no-go). By contrast, small but reliable R-E compatibility effects emerged when the same task was performed in a joint setting. These results indicate that the knowledge of a coactor's R-E contingencies can influence whether self-produced action effects are used for one's own motor control.

Action and perception in social contexts: intentional binding for social action effects

The subjective experience of controlling events in the environment alters the perception of these events. For instance, the interval between one's own actions and their consequences is subjectively compressed—a phenomenon known as intentional binding. In two experiments, we studied intentional binding in a social setting in which actions of one agent prompted a second agent to perform another action. Participants worked in pairs and were assigned to a “leader” and a “follower” role, respectively. The leader's key presses triggered (after a variable interval) a tone and this tone served as go signal for the follower to perform a keypress as well. Leaders and followers estimated the interval between the leader's keypress and the following tone, or the interval between the tone and the follower's keypress. The leader showed reliable intentional binding for both intervals relative to the follower's estimates. These results indicate that human agents experience a pre-reflective sense of agency for genuinely social consequences of their actions.

Neural correlates of ideomotor effect anticipations

How does our mind produce physical, goal-directed action of our body? For about 200years, philosophers and psychologists hypothesized the transformation from mind to body to rely on the anticipation of an action's sensory consequences. Whereas this hypothesis received tremendous support from behavioral experiments, the neural underpinnings of action control via such ideomotor effect anticipations are virtually unknown. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, the present study identified the inferior parietal cortex and the parahippocampal gyrus as key regions for this type of action control - setting the stage for a neuroscientific framework for explaining action control by ideomotor effect anticipations and thus enabling a synthesis of psychological and neuroscientific approaches to human action.