EEG frequency tagging reveals the integration of dissimilar observed actions.

Extensive research has demonstrated that visual and motor cortices can simultaneously represent multiple observed actions. This ability undoubtedly constitutes a crucial ingredient for the understanding of complex visual scenes involving different agents. However, it is still unclear how these distinct representations are integrated into coherent and meaningful percepts.

An EEG frequency tagging study on biological motion perception in children with DCD.

Background: The perception of biological motion requires accurate prediction of the spatiotemporal dynamics of human movement. Research on Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) suggests deficits in accurate motor prediction, raising the question whether not just action execution, but also action perception is perturbed in this disorder.

Aims: To examine action perception by comparing the neural response to the observation of apparent biological motion in children with and without DCD.

Top-down biological motion perception does not differ between adults scoring high versus low on autism traits.

The perception of biological motion is an important social cognitive ability. Models of biological motion perception recognize two processes that contribute to the perception of biological motion: a bottom-up process that binds optic-flow patterns into a coherent percept of biological motion and a top-down process that binds sequences of body-posture 'snapshots' over time into a fluent percept of biological motion. The vast majority of studies on autism and biological motion perception have used point-light figure stimuli, which elicit biological motion perception predominantly via bottom-up processes.

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.

Evidence for a role of synchrony but not common fate in the perception of biological group movements.

Extensive research has shown that observers are able to efficiently extract summary information from groups of people. However, little is known about the cues that determine whether multiple people are represented as a social group or as independent individuals. Initial research on this topic has primarily focused on the role of static cues.

Top-Down Modulation of Motor Priming by Belief About Animacy.

Research has shown that people automatically imitate others and that this tendency is stronger when the other person is a human compared with a nonhuman agent. However, a controversial question is whether automatic imitation is also modulated by whether people the other person is a human. Although early research supported this hypothesis, not all studies reached the same conclusion and a recent meta-analysis found that there is currently neither evidence in favor nor against an influence of animacy beliefs on automatic imitation.

Associative Visuomotor Learning Using Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Induces Stimulus-Response Interference.

Classical conditioning states that the systematic co-occurrence of a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus can cause the neutral stimulus to, over time, evoke the same response as the unconditioned stimulus. On a neural level, Hebbian learning suggests that this type of learning occurs through changes in synaptic plasticity when two neurons are simultaneously active, resulting in increased connectivity between them. Inspired by associative learning theories, we here investigated whether the mere co-activation of visual stimuli and stimulation of the primary motor cortex using TMS would result in stimulus-response associations that can impact future behavior.

Covert and overt automatic imitation are correlated.

Most theoretical accounts of imitation assume that covert and overt measures of automatic imitation tap into the same underlying construct. Despite this widespread assumption, it is not well supported by empirical evidence. In fact, the only study investigating the relation between covert and overt automatic imitation failed to find a correlation between them (Genschow et al.

EEG frequency tagging evidence of intact social interaction recognition in adults with autism.

To explain the social difficulties in autism, many studies have been conducted on social stimuli processing. However, this research has mostly used basic social stimuli (e.g.

Should I trust you? Investigating trustworthiness judgements of painful facial expressions.

Past research indicates that patients' reports of pain are often met with skepticism and that observers tend to underestimate patients' pain. The mechanisms behind these biases are not yet fully understood. One relevant domain of inquiry is the interaction between the emotional valence of a stranger's expression and the onlooker's trustworthiness judgment.

The role of objecthood and animacy in apparent movement processing.

Although the ability to detect the actions of other living beings is key for adaptive social behavior, it is still unclear if biological motion perception is specific to human stimuli. Biological motion perception involves both bottom-up processing of movement kinematics ('motion pathway') and top-down reconstruction of movement from changes in the body posture ('form pathway'). Previous research using point-light displays has shown that processing in the motion pathway depends on the presence of a well-defined, configural shape (objecthood) but not necessarily on whether that shape depicts a living being (animacy).

Using EEG movement tagging to isolate brain responses coupled to biological movements.

Detecting biological motion is essential for adaptive social behavior. Previous research has revealed the brain processes underlying this ability. However, brain activity during biological motion perception captures a multitude of processes.

Concurrently observed actions are represented not as compound actions but as independent actions.

Recent research suggests that we can simultaneously represent the actions of multiple agents in our motor system. However, it is unclear exactly how concurrently observed actions are represented. Here, we tested two competing hypotheses.

Evidence for a two-step model of social group influence.

Social group influence plays an important role in societally relevant phenomena such as rioting and mass panic. One way through which groups influence individuals is by directing their gaze. Evidence that gaze following increases with group size has typically been explained in terms of strategic processes.

Does belief in free will influence biological motion perception?

Previous research suggests that belief in free will correlates with intentionality attribution. However, whether belief in free will is also related to more basic social processes is unknown. Based on evidence that biological motion contains intentionality cues that observers spontaneously extract, we investigate whether people who believe more in free will, or in related constructs, such as dualism and determinism, would be better at picking up such cues and therefore at detecting biological agents hidden in noise, or would be more inclined to detect intentionality cues and therefore to detect biological agents even when there are none.

Manipulating Belief in Free Will and Its Downstream Consequences: A Meta-Analysis.

Ever since some scientists and popular media put forward the idea that free will is an illusion, the question has risen what would happen if people stopped believing in free will. Psychological research has investigated this question by testing the consequences of experimentally weakening people's free will beliefs. The results of these investigations have been mixed, with successful experiments and unsuccessful replications.

EEG frequency tagging evidence of social interaction recognition.

Previous neuroscience studies have provided important insights into the neural processing of third-party social interaction recognition. Unfortunately, however, the methods they used are limited by a high susceptibility to noise. Electroencephalogram (EEG) frequency tagging is a promising technique to overcome this limitation, as it is known for its high signal-to-noise ratio.

Relating free will beliefs and attitudes.

Most people believe in free will, which is foundational for our sense of agency and responsibility. Past research demonstrated that such beliefs are dynamic, and can be manipulated experimentally. Much less is known about free will attitudes (FWAs; do you value free will?), whether they are equally dynamic, and about their relation to free will beliefs (FWBs).

Model expertise does not influence automatic imitation.

Social learning theories state that new skills can be learned by observing others. Automatic imitation is thought to play an important role in this process. However, whether imitation is beneficial to learning critically depends on the expertise of the imitated person.

EEG Frequency Tagging Reveals the Integration of Form and Motion Cues into the Perception of Group Movement.

The human brain has dedicated mechanisms for processing other people's movements. Previous research has revealed how these mechanisms contribute to perceiving the movements of individuals but has left open how we perceive groups of people moving together. Across three experiments, we test whether movement perception depends on the spatiotemporal relationships among the movements of multiple agents.

Collective rule-breaking.

Rules form an important part of our everyday lives. Here we explore the role of social influence in rule-breaking. In particular, we identify some of the cognitive mechanisms underlying rule-breaking and propose approaches for how they can be scaled up to the level of groups or crowds to better understand the emergence of collective rule-breaking.

Observing conflicting actions elicits conflict adaptation.

A key prediction of ideomotor theories is that action perception relies on the same mechanisms as action planning. While this prediction has received support from studies investigating action perception in one-on-one interactions, situations with multiple actors pose a challenge because in order to corepresent multiple observed actions, observers have to represent more actions in their motor system than they can physically execute. If representing multiple observed actions, like representing individual observed actions, recycles action planning processes, this should lead to response conflict by observation.

A direct test of the similarity assumption - Focusing on differences as compared with similarities decreases automatic imitation.

Individuals automatically imitate a wide range of different behaviors. Previous research suggests that imitation as a social process depends on the similarity between interaction partners. However, some of the experiments supporting this notion could not be replicated and all of the supporting experiments manipulated not only similarity between actor and observer, but also other features.

Group membership does not modulate automatic imitation.

Individuals have the automatic tendency to imitate each other. A key prediction of different theories explaining automatic imitation is that individuals imitate in-group members more strongly than out-group members. However, the empirical basis for this prediction is rather inconclusive.