Journal
FRONTIERS IN HUMAN NEUROSCIENCE
Volume 8, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
FRONTIERS MEDIA SA
DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00254
Keywords
affordances; action understanding; action prediction; object function; object manipulation
Categories
Funding
- Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) [ES/J019178/1]
- ESRC [ES/J019178/1] Funding Source: UKRI
- Economic and Social Research Council [ES/J019178/1] Funding Source: researchfish
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Action understanding lies at the heart of social interaction. Prior research has often conceptualized this capacity in terms of a motoric matching of observed actions to an action in one's motor repertoire, but has ignored the role of object information. In this manuscript, we set out an alternative conception of intention understanding, which places the role of objects as central to our observation and comprehension of the actions of others. We outline the current understanding of the interconnectedness of action and object knowledge, demonstrating how both rely heavily on the other. We then propose a novel framework, the affordance-matching hypothesis, which incorporates these findings into a simple model of action understanding, in which object knowledge-what an object is for and how it is used-can inform and constrain both action interpretation and prediction. We will review recent empirical evidence that supports such an object-based view of action understanding and we relate the affordance matching hypothesis to recent proposals that have reconceptualized the role of mirror neurons in action understanding.
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