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Inferring another's expectation from action: the role of peripheral sensation

Nature Neuroscience volume 8, pages 1295–1297 (2005)Cite this article

Abstract

It is unclear how knowledge of one's actions and one's body contribute to the understanding of others' actions. Here we show that two subjects lacking cutaneous touch and sense of movement and position show a selective deficit in interpreting another person's anticipation of weight when seeing him lifting boxes. We suggest that this ability occurs through mental simulation of action dependent on internal motor representations, which require peripheral sensation for their maintenance.

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Figure 1: Video recording.
Figure 2: Results.
Figure 3: Movement kinematics and weight expectations in the small box condition.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Amalienstr. 33, Munich, 80799, Germany

    Simone Bosbach & Wolfgang Prinz

  2. University of Bournemouth and Poole Hospital, Clinical Neurophysiology, Longfleet Road, Poole, BH15 2JB, UK

    Jonathan Cole

  3. Psychology Department, Rutgers University, 101 Warren Street, Newark, 07102, New Jersey, USA

    Günther Knoblich

Authors
  1. Simone Bosbach
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  2. Jonathan Cole
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  3. Wolfgang Prinz
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  4. Günther Knoblich
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Correspondence to Simone Bosbach.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Bosbach, S., Cole, J., Prinz, W. et al. Inferring another's expectation from action: the role of peripheral sensation. Nat Neurosci 8, 1295–1297 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1535

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