| Popis: |
Converging evidence from behavioural, neuroimaging and neurostimulation studies demonstrate that observing an action activates the neural mechanisms necessary to produce it, a phenomenon commonly termed automatic imitation. This is typically assessed behaviourally using the Stimulus Response Compatibility (SRC) task, where participants are presented with either congruent or incongruent prompt-distractor pairings (an incongruent trial instructs participants to press down their index finger paired with a video of a middle-finger press). Automatic imitation is taken as the response time and accuracy differences between congruent and incongruent trials, with faster and more accurate responses observed for congruent trials. Whilst a wealth of research has been conducted on automatic imitation, little work has assessed its automaticity. In this paper, we focussed on the efficiency dimension of automaticity. An efficient behaviour operates independently of central resources, persisting under concurrent load. Experiments 1 and 2 assessed the efficiency of imitation, with participants completing either speech- or manual-motor SRC trials under high, medium or low-load induced with a sequence memory task. In both experiments, the presence of a two-way between load and congruency would suggest that load is inefficient. The results for both studies, however, provided robust evidence against the presence of a load by congruency interaction, demonstrating the efficiency of imitation. These results add to a growing body of work suggesting that automatic imitation can be termed efficient, and therefore automatic on this criterion. |
