Is action understanding an automatic process? Both cognitive and perceptual processing are required for the identification of actions and intentions.

ABSTRACT: The ability to identify others' actions and intentions, "action understanding," is crucial for successful social interaction. Under direct accounts, action understanding takes place without the involvement of inferential processes, a claim that has yet to be tested using behavioural measures. Using a dual-task paradigm, the present study aimed to establish whether the identification of others' actions and intentions depends on automatic or inferential processing, by manipulating working memory load during performance of a task designed to target the identification of actions and intentions. Experiment 1 tested a novel action understanding task targeting action identification and intention identification. This task was then combined with two working memory manipulations (cognitive: Experime

SUBMITTER: Thompson EL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9773155 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature