Prediction error induced motor contagions in human behaviors

Abstract

Motor contagions refer to implicit effects on ones actions induced by observation of others actions. Motor contagions are believed to be induced simply by action observation and cause an observers action to become similar to the observed action. In contrast, here we report a new motor contagion that is induced only when the observation is accompanied by prediction errors-differences between actions one observes and those he/she predicts or expects. Moreover, this contagion may not manifest as a similarity between ones own and observed actions. In our experiment, observation of the same action induced distinct motor contagions, depending on whether prediction errors are present or not. In the absence of prediction errors, similarly to previous reports, participants actions changed to become similar to the observed action, while in the presence of prediction errors, their actions changed to diverge away from it. Our results suggest distinct effects of action observation and action prediction on human actions.