Motor resonance and automatic imitation, complementarity

How do we respond when we observe actions performed by others? When and how do we tend to put ourselves in the shows of others? We have some studies showing that we tend to automatically imitate more people similar to us (e.g. humans instead of humanoid robots). When do we decide to act in a complementary way, to perform a task together? Which are the behaviors we adopt, and the neural basis of this behavior (mirror mechanims)?

We are interested in how perspective (ego vs. allocentric), gender (same vs, different gender), age (same vs. different age) and more generally body (same vs. different bodily characteristics) influence our automatic decisions to engage actions with others, imitating them (motor resonance) or performing joint actions with them. More generally, we are interested in social cognition phenemena.

Papers on motor resonance and joint action (since 2004)

• • Gianelli, C., Marzocchi, M., Borghi, A.M. (accepted).Grasping the agent’s perspective: a kinematics investigation of linguistic perspective in Italian and German. Frontiers in Psychology.
  • Lugli, L., Obertis, A., Borghi, A.M. (2016, in press).Hitting is male, giving is female: Automatic imitation and complementarity during action observation. Psychological Research. pre-print to download
  • Jacquet P.O., Roy A.C., Chambon V., Borghi,A.M., Salemme R., Farnè A.,& Reilly K.T. (2016). Changing ideas about others’ intentions: updating prior expectations tunes activity in the human motor system Scientific Reports, 6:26995. DOI: 10.1038/srep26995. pdf to download
  • Borghi, A.M., Riggio, L. (2015). Stable and variable affordances are both automatic and flexible. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9:351. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00351. pdf to download
  • Scorolli, C., Miatton, M., Wheaton, L., Borghi, A.M. (2014). I give you a cup, I get a cup: A kinematics study on social intention. Neuropsychologia, 57, 196-204. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.03.006.. pdf to download
  • Gianelli, C., Lugli, L., Baroni, G., Nicoletti, R., Borghi, A.M. (2013). The impact of social context and language comprehension on behaviour: A kinematic investigation. PLoS ONE, Volume 8(12): e85151. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0085151. pre-print
  • Tummolini, L. Scorolli, C., Borghi, A.M. (2013). Disentangling the sense of ownership from the sense of fairness. Commentary on Baumard, André and Sperber, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36, pp 101-102. doi:10.1017/S0140525X1200088X. . pre-print
  • Lugli, L., Baroni, G., Gianelli, C., Borghi, A.M., Nicoletti, R. (2012). Self, others, objects: How this triadic interaction modulates our behavior. Memory and Cognition, 40, 1373-1386
    DOI 10.3758/s13421-012-0218-0. pre-print. Materials (pdf)
  • Anelli, F., Borghi, A.M., Nicoletti, R.(2012).Grasping the pain: Motor resonance with dangerous affordances. Consciousness & Cognition, 21, 1627-1639. pre-print
  • Anelli, F., Nicoletti, R., Kalkan, S., Sahin, E., Borghi, A.M. (2012). Humans and robotics hands grasping danger. Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), WCCI 2012 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence, pp. 1613-1620, ISBN: 978-1-4673-1489-3. pre-print
  • Liuzza, M.T., Setti, A., Borghi, A.M. (2012). Kids observing other kids’ hands: visuomotor priming in children. Consciousness & Cognition, 21, 383-392. pre-print.
  • Jacquet, P., Binkofski, F., Tessari, A., Borghi, A.M. (in press).Can object affordances impact on human social learning of tool use? Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Commentary to the target article The cognitive bases of human tool use by K. Vaesen. pre-print
  • Ranzini, M., Borghi, A.M., Nicoletti, R. (2011). With hands I don’t centre! Action- and object-related effects of hand-cueing in the line bisection. Neuropsychologia, 49, 2918-2928. pre-print; Table
  • Caruana, F., Borghi, A.M.(2011). Anthropos physei politikon zoon: la Social Cognition a vent’anni dalla scoperta dei Neuroni Mirror. Brain Factor. pdf .link
  • Borghi, A.M, Caruana, F. (2011). Cognizione sociale. Introduction to the special issue Cognizione sociale, edited by A.M.Borghi, F. Caruana. Sistemi intelligenti, XXIII, 2, 219-222. pre-print. index of the special issue on Social Cognition. (pdf) recensione su Brain Factor. recensione SOLE XXIV ore.
  • Borghi, A.M, Gianelli, C., Lugli, L. (2011).La dimensione sociale delle affordance: Affordance tra io e altri. Special issue Cognizione sociale, edited by A.M.Borghi, F. Caruana. Sistemi intelligenti, XXIII, 2, 291-300. pre-print
  • Lugli, L., Baroni, G., Gianelli, C., Borghi, A.M (2011). L'importanza degli “altri”: come il contesto relazionale influenza il sistema motorio. Giornale Italiano di Psicologia, 38, 577-584. Materiali
  • Gianelli, C., Lugli, L., Baroni, G., Nicoletti, R., Borghi, A.M (2011). “The object is wonderful or prickly": how different object properties modulate behavior in a joint context. In: Kokinov, B., Karmiloff-Smith, A., Nersessian, N. J. (eds.) European Perspectives on Cognitive Science. © New Bulgarian University Press, 2011 ISBN 978-954-535-660-5 (Eurocogsci, paper 269).pre-print
  • Ferri, F., Stoianov, I. P., Gianelli, C., D'Amico, L., Borghi, A.M. & Gallese, V. (2010).When action meets emotions. How facial displays of emotion influence goal-related behavior. PLoS ONE 5(10): e13126. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0013126. link
  • Pezzulo, G., Barca, L., Lamberti Bocconi, A., Borghi, A.M. (2010), Motor simulation in a memory task: Evidence from rock climbing,. Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society, 2010.
  • Borghi, A.M., Cimatti, F.(2010). Embodied cognition and beyond: Acting and sensing the body. NeuropsychologiA, 48, 763-773. pre-print
  • Tessari, A., Tsakiris, M., Borghi, A.M., Serino, A. (2010). The sense of body: A multidisciplinary approach to body representation. Introduction to the special number on The sense of body, Neuropsychologia, 48, 643-444.
  • Borghi, A.M. (2009). Comprensione del linguaggio: Movimento, azione, socialità. (Language comprehension: Movement, action, social life). Teorie e modelli, 1, 67-77 (numero tematico su "Movimento e funzioni cognitive" a cura di Carmela Morabito e Gloria Galloni). pre-print
  • Kalénine, S., Bonthoux, F., Borghi, A.M. (2009). How action and context priming influence categorization: a developmental study. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 27, 717-730. pre-print
  • Setti, A., Borghi, A.M., Tessari, A. (2009). Moving hands, moving entities. Brain and Cognition, 70, 253-258. preprint
  • Bruzzo, A., Borghi, A.M. & Ghirlanda, S. (2008). Hand-object interaction in perspective. Neuroscience Letters, 441, 61-5. pre-print
  • Tessari, A., Borghi, A.M. (2007). Body image and body schema: The shared representation of body image and the role of dynamic body schema in perspective and imitation. Commentary to the target-article 'Somatosensory processes subserving perception and action' by Dijkerman & de Haan. Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), 30, 2, 221-222. preprint
  • Bazzarin, V., Borghi, A.M., Tessari, A., Nicoletti, R. (2007). Is a small apple more like an apple or more like a cherry? In: S. Vosniadou & D.Kayser (eds.). Proceedings of the  Meeting of the European Society of Cognitive Science, Delphi 2007. London: Erlbaum.(pdf).
  • Borghi, A.M., Bonfiglioli, C., Lugli, L., Ricciardelli, P., Rubichi, S., Nicoletti, R. (2007). Are visual stimuli sufficient to evoke motor information? Studies with hand primes. Neuroscience Letters, 411, 17-21 . preprint