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Abstract

Previous research has shown that humans share numerous cognitive processes when they interact, such as representations of tasks, goals, intentions, and space. However, little is known about the perceptual representation of complementary actions, in particular actions in an interaction that are often observed together. We examined behavioral correlates of potentially shared neural representations for human actions that are visually dissimilar, but contingent from accumulated previous observations in spatiotemporal proximity. Namely, we measured visual adaptation aftereffects in 25 participants for perceiving the actions Throwing and Giving after prolonged exposure to the actions Catching and Taking, and vice versa, in a completely crossed design. We found significant adaptation aftereffects for all tested actions (p<0.001) as well as for the complementary actions. For the complementary actions, the overall adaptation aftereffect for the disambiguation of Catching from Taking was significant after prolonged exposure (adaptation) to Throwing and Giving (p<0.001), as well as for the disambiguation of Throwing from Giving when Catching and Taking were used as adaptors (p¼0.002). These results support the hypothesis that processes involved in the recognition of complementary actions might employ a shared neural representation.