Experience modulates automatic imitation

Experience-based priming of body parts: A study of action imitation

“…di Pellegrino et al, 1992;Ferrari et al, 2003;Puce et al, 2000). Parallel evidence of behavioral sensitivity to movement type comes from many studies of imitation (Bertenthal et al, 2006;Brass et al, 2000Brass et al, , 2001Castiello et al, 2002;Chartrand and Bargh, 1999;Craighero et al, 2002;Dimberg et al, 2000;Heyes et al, 2005;Kerzel and Bekkering, 2000;Kilner et al, 2003;Press et 5 al., 2005;Stanley et al, 2007;Stürmer et al, 2000;Vogt et al, 2003), but is particularly clear in research on 'automatic imitation' using stimulus-response compatibility paradigms. For example, when participants have been instructed to make a pre-specified response (e.g.…”

“…A related procedure has previously been employed by Heyes et al (2005) to investigate effects of correlated sensorimotor training on imitation of different movements performed with the same effector.…”

“…Calvo-Merino et al, 2005;Lahav et al, 2007). If the development of imitation, and the mirror neuron system, is instead experience-dependent, then it may draw on three kinds of experience: unimodal sensory (Ferrari et al, 2005), unimodal motor (Calvo-Merino et al, 2006) or sensorimotor experience (Heyes, 2001;Heyes et al, 2005;Keysers and Perrett, 2004;Lahav et al, 2007;Obayashi et al, 2001). Unimodal sensory experience is provided by passive observation of an action, whereas unimodal motor experience arises from repeated execution of an action.…”

“…This possibility should be investigated in future research, also because the pattern of facilitation without interference seen in our RT data was not mirrored in the error rates. Among the studies that have used either two alternative actions of the same effector (Brass et al, 2001;Heyes et al, 2005;Kerzel and Bekkering, 2000;Press et al, 2005) or the same action of two alternative effectors (Bertenthal et al, 2006) to investigate motor priming when spatial compatibility was controlled, none has, to date, distinguished between the relative contributions of facilitation and interference to the automatic imitation effect.…”

Sensorimotor learning and the ontogeny of the mirror neuron system

“…In order to focus on the role of sensorimotor experience in creating mirror responses, Heyes and colleagues [35] developed what has proven to be a highly fruitful training procedure. Participants were randomly allocated to one of two groups.…”