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Abstract

Action control, action selection and action perception:
The concept that the perception of actions (the ideomotoric principle) stimulates theexecution of related actions, has a long tradition in experimental psychology. In thiscontribution new evidence from behavioural experiments on the relation between ac-tion perception, on action imitation and on the spontaneous induction of action, withboth support and specify the ideomotoric principle especially with respect to the roleof action goals and action intentions is discussed. In addition using examples of actionperception the question of how behavioural and neuro-scientific research can be relat-ed to one another is discussed. It has been known for some time from neurophysiolo-gical research that the brain of higher mammals is equipped with a specific structure(in the primates particularly the pre-motoric and parietal structures) which supportsaction perception. Since the characteristic features of some of these structures is thatthey also participate in the perception of external actions, it seems that these structuresmay constitute the functional basis of the ideomotoric principle.