Kinematic priming of action predictions

TY - JOUR

T1 - Kinematic priming of action predictions

AU - Scaliti, Eugenio

AU - Pullar, Kiri

AU - Borghini, Giulia

AU - Cavallo, Andrea

AU - Panzeri, Stefano

AU - Becchio, Cristina

N1 - Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

PY - 2023/7/10

Y1 - 2023/7/10

N2 - The ability to anticipate what others will do next is crucial for navigating social, interactive environments. Here, we develop an experimental and analytical framework to measure the implicit readout of prospective intention information from movement kinematics. Using a primed action categorization task, we first demonstrate implicit access to intention information by establishing a novel form of priming, which we term kinematic priming: subtle differences in movement kinematics prime action prediction. Next, using data collected from the same participants in a forced-choice intention discrimination task 1 h later, we quantify single-trial intention readout-the amount of intention information read by individual perceivers in individual kinematic primes-and assess whether it can be used to predict the amount of kinematic priming. We demonstrate that the amount of kinematic priming, as indexed by both response times (RTs) and initial fixations to a given probe, is directly proportional to the amount of intention information read by the individual perceiver at the single-trial level. These results demonstrate that human perceivers have rapid, implicit access to intention information encoded in movement kinematics and highlight the potential of our approach to reveal the computations that permit the readout of this information with single-subject, single-trial resolution.

AB - The ability to anticipate what others will do next is crucial for navigating social, interactive environments. Here, we develop an experimental and analytical framework to measure the implicit readout of prospective intention information from movement kinematics. Using a primed action categorization task, we first demonstrate implicit access to intention information by establishing a novel form of priming, which we term kinematic priming: subtle differences in movement kinematics prime action prediction. Next, using data collected from the same participants in a forced-choice intention discrimination task 1 h later, we quantify single-trial intention readout-the amount of intention information read by individual perceivers in individual kinematic primes-and assess whether it can be used to predict the amount of kinematic priming. We demonstrate that the amount of kinematic priming, as indexed by both response times (RTs) and initial fixations to a given probe, is directly proportional to the amount of intention information read by the individual perceiver at the single-trial level. These results demonstrate that human perceivers have rapid, implicit access to intention information encoded in movement kinematics and highlight the potential of our approach to reveal the computations that permit the readout of this information with single-subject, single-trial resolution.

U2 - 10.1016/j.cub.2023.05.055

DO - 10.1016/j.cub.2023.05.055

M3 - SCORING: Journal article

C2 - 37339628

VL - 33

SP - 2717-2727.e6

JO - CURR BIOL

JF - CURR BIOL

SN - 0960-9822

IS - 13

ER -