Methodological issues in measures of imitative reaction times [An article from: Brain and Cognition]

This digital document is a journal article from Brain and Cognition, published by Elsevier in 2007. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Ideomotor (IM) theory suggests that observing someone else perform an action activates an internal motor representation of that behaviour within the observer. Evidence supporting the case for an ideomotor theory of imitation has come from studies that show imitative responses to be faster than the same behavioural measures performed in response to spatial cues. In an attempt to replicate these findings, we manipulated the salience of the visual cue and found that we could reverse the advantage of the imitative cue over the spatial cue. We suggest that participants utilised a simple visuomotor mechanism to perform all aspects of this task, with performance being driven by the relative visual salience of the stimuli. Imitation is a more complex motor skill that would constitute an inefficient strategy for rapid performance.