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Understanding others’ distal goals from proximal communicative actions
Title / Series / Name
PLOS ONE
Publication Volume
18
Publication Issue
1
Pages
Editors
Keywords
Communications
Kinematics
Musculoskeletal mechanics
Perception
Sign language
Social communication
Sports
Velocity
Kinematics
Musculoskeletal mechanics
Perception
Sign language
Social communication
Sports
Velocity
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14018/14197
Abstract
Many social interactions require individuals to coordinate their actions and to inform each other about their goals. Often these goals concern an immediate (i.e., proximal) action, as when people give each other a brief handshake, but they sometimes also refer to a future (i.e. distal) action, as when football players perform a passing sequence. The present study investigates whether observers can derive information about such distal goals by relying on kinematic modulations of an actor’s instrumental actions. In Experiment 1 participants were presented with animations of a box being moved at different velocities towards an apparent endpoint. The distal goal, however, was for the object to be moved past this endpoint, to one of two occluded target locations. Participants then selected the location which they considered the likely distal goal of the action. As predicted, participants were able to detect differences in movement velocity and, based on these differences, systematically mapped the movements to the two distal goal locations. Adding a distal goal led to more variation in the way participants mapped the observed movements onto different target locations. The results of Experiments 2 and 3 indicated that this cannot be explained by difficulties in perceptual discrimination. Rather, the increased variability likely reflects differences in interpreting the underlying connection between proximal communicative actions and distal goals. The present findings extend previous research on sensorimotor communication by demonstrating that communicative action modulations are not restricted to predicting proximal goals but can also be used to infer more distal goals.
Topic
Publisher
Place of Publication
Type
Journal article
Date
2023
Language
ISBN
Identifiers
10.1371/journal.pone.0280265