Gesturing Meaning: Non-action Words Activate the Motor System

Across cultures, speakers produce iconic gestures, which add – through the movement of the speakers’ hands – a pictorial dimension to the speakers’ message. These gestures capture not only the motor content but also the visuospatial content of the message. Here, we provide first evidence for a direct link between the representation of perceptual information and the motor system that can account for these observations. Across four experiments, participants’ hand movements captured both shapes that were directly perceived, and shapes that were only implicitly activated by unrelated semantic judgments of object words. These results were obtained even though the objects were not associated with any motor behaviors that would match the gestures the participants had to produce. Moreover, implied shape affected not only gesture selection processes but also their actual execution – as measured by the shape of hand motion through space – revealing intimate links between implied shape representation and motor output. The results are discussed in terms of ideomotor theories of action and perception, and provide one avenue for explaining the ubiquitous phenomenon of iconic gestures

Expectations of efficient actions bias social perception : a pre-registered online replication

Funding This work was supported by the Leverhulme Trust (grant no. RPG-2019-248) awarded to P.B.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Editorial : Behavioral and Neural Bases of Object Affordance Processing and Its Clinical Implications

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

I see what you say : Prior knowledge of other's goals automatically biases the perception of their actions

Acknowledgments This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [Grant Number ES/J019178/1], which had no involvement in the design of the study nor preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Comprehension of action sequences : The case of paper, scissors, rock

Bach, P., Knoblich, G., Friederici, A. D., & Prinz, W. (2001). Comprehension of action sequences: The case of paper, scissors, rock. In K. Stenning & J. D. Moore (Ed.), Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (S. 39-44). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Publisher PD

Looking ahead: Anticipatory cueing of attention to objects others will look at

Seeing a face gaze at an object elicits rapid attention shifts towards the same object. We tested whether gaze cuing is predictive: do people shift their attention towards objects others are merely expected to look at? Participants categorized objects while a face either looked at this object, at another object, or straight ahead. Unbeknownst to participants, one face would only look at drinks and the other at foods. We tested whether attention was drawn towards objects “favoured” by a face even when currently looking straight ahead. Indeed, while gaze expectations initially had a disruptive effect, participants did shift attention to the faces‟ favoured objects once learning had been established, as long as emotional expressions had indicated personal relevance of the object to the individual. These data support predictive models of social perception, which assume that predictions can drive perception and action, as if these stimuli were directly perceived

Is Implicit Level-2 Visual perspective taking embodied? Spontaneous perceptual simulation of others’ perspectives is not impaired by motor restriction

Open access via Sage agreement The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: E.W. was funded by a PhD student grant from the University of Plymouth.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Editorial : Predictive mechanisms in action, perception, cognition, and clinical disorders

Acknowledgments The authors would like to acknowledge their funding sources (NIH F32 MH117933 to AD, Alon Fellowship to LR).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Predictive person models elicit motor biases: The face-inhibition effect revisited

Using an established paradigm, we tested whether people derive motoric predictions about an actor’s forthcoming actions from prior knowledge about them and the context in which they are seen. In two experiments, participants identified famous tennis and soccer players using either hand or foot responses. Athletes were shown either carrying out or not carrying out their associated actions (swinging, kicking), either in the context where these actions are typically seen (tennis court, soccer Pitch) or outside these contexts (beach, awards ceremony). Replicating prior work, identifying non-acting athletes revealed the negative compatibility effects: viewing tennis players led to faster responses with a foot than a hand, and vice versa for viewing soccer players. Consistent with the idea that negative compatibility effects result from the absence of a predicted action, these effects were eliminated (or reversed) when the athletes were seen carrying out actions typically associated with them. Strikingly, however, these motoric biases were not limited to In-Context trials but were, if anything, more robust in the Out-of-Context trials. This pattern held even when attention was drawn specifically to the context (Experiment 2). These results confirm that people hold motoric knowledge about the actions that others typically carry out and that these actions are part of perceptual representations that are accessed when those others are re-encountered, possibly in order to resolve uncertainty in person perception

More Than Meets the Eye? An Experimental Design to Test Robot Visual Perspective-Taking Facilitators Beyond Mere-Appearance

We thank Jim Urquhart, Louis Aldrich, Gemma Cutler, Thomas Alexander and Fiammetta Marini. This work was supported by funding from the SGSSS/ESRC Steers Competition 2020/21(ES/P000681/1, 2605775) to PB and ME