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Matthew Hudson

University Of Plymouth, Psychology, Faculty Member

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I am a lecturer in Psychology at the University of Plymouth, UK. My research concerns the cognitive and neural mechanisms of social interactions in neurotypical and clinical populations. Specifically, I am interested in how prior knowledge of other people's goals and intentions predictively biases the perception of their actions.

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Francesca Setti

Sreenivasan Meyyappan

University of California, Davis

Francesca Carota

Stephen Ramanoël

Beatrice de Gelder

Fondazione Santa Lucia

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Papers by Matthew Hudson

Functional organization of social perception in the human brain

Humans rapidly extract diverse and complex information from ongoing social interactions, but the ... more Humans rapidly extract diverse and complex information from ongoing social interactions, but the perceptual and neural organization of the different aspects of social perception remains unresolved. We showed short film clips with rich social content to 97 healthy participants while their haemodynamic brain activity was measured with fMRI. The clips were annotated moment-to-moment for 112 social features. Cluster analysis revealed that 13 dimensions were sufficient for describing the social perceptual space. Regression analysis was used to map regional neural response profiles to different social features. Multivariate pattern analysis was then utilized to establish the spatial specificity of these responses. The results revealed a gradient in the processing of social information in the brain. Posterior temporal and occipital regions were broadly tuned to most social dimensions and the classifier revealed that these responses showed spatial specificity for social dimensions; in contr...

BRIEF REPORT One Step Ahead: The Perceived Kinematics of Others ’ Actions Are Biased Toward Expected Goals

Action observation is often conceptualized in a bottom-up manner, where sensory information activ... more Action observation is often conceptualized in a bottom-up manner, where sensory information activates conceptual (or motor) representations. In contrast, here we show that expectations about an actor’s goal have a top-down predictive effect on action perception, biasing it toward these goals. In 3 experiments, participants observed hands reach for or withdraw from objects and judged whether a probe stimulus corresponded to the hand’s final position. Before action onset, participants generated action expectations on the basis of either object types (safe or painful, Experiments 1 and 2) or abstract color cues (Experiment 3). Participants more readily mistook probes displaced in a predicted position (relative to unpredicted positions) for the hand’s final position, and this predictive bias was larger when the movement and expectation were aligned. These effects were evident for low-level movement and high-level goal expectancies. Expectations bias action observation toward the predict...

Anticipating action sequences based on the actor’s gaze direction in individuals with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder

Perception, 2010

Decoding music-evoked emotions in the auditory and motor cortex

Music can induce strong subjective experience of emotions, but it is debated whether these respon... more Music can induce strong subjective experience of emotions, but it is debated whether these responses engage the same neural circuits as emotions elicited by biologically significant events. We examined the functional neural basis of music-induced emotions in a large sample (n=102) of subjects who listened to emotionally engaging (happy, sad, fearful, and tender) pieces of instrumental music while their haemodynamic brain activity was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Ratings of the four categorical emotions and liking were used to predict haemodynamic responses in general linear model (GLM) analysis of the fMRI data. Multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) was used to reveal discrete neural signatures of the four categories of music-induced emotions. To map neural circuits governing non-musical emotions, the subjects were scanned while viewing short emotionally evocative film clips. The GLM revealed that most emotions were associated with activity in the audit...

One step ahead: The perceived kinematics of others’ actions are biased toward expected goals

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2016

Action observation is often conceptualized in a bottom-up manner, where sensory information activ... more Action observation is often conceptualized in a bottom-up manner, where sensory information activates conceptual (or motor) representations. In contrast, here we show that expectations about an actor's goal have a top-down predictive effect on action perception, biasing it toward these goals. In 3 experiments, participants observed hands reach for or withdraw from objects and judged whether a probe stimulus corresponded to the hand's final position. Before action onset, participants generated action expectations on the basis of either object types (safe or painful, Experiments 1 and 2) or abstract color cues (Experiment 3). Participants more readily mistook probes displaced in a predicted position (relative to unpredicted positions) for the hand's final position, and this predictive bias was larger when the movement and expectation were aligned. These effects were evident for low-level movement and high-level goal expectancies. Expectations bias action observation toward the predicted goals. These results challenge current bottom-up views and support recent predictive models of action observation.

Peripheral cues and gaze direction jointly focus attention and inhibition of return

Cognitive neuroscience, Jan 10, 2015

Centrally presented gaze cues typically elicit a delayed inhibition of return (IOR) effect compar... more Centrally presented gaze cues typically elicit a delayed inhibition of return (IOR) effect compared to peripheral exogenous cues. We investigated whether gaze cues elicit early onset IOR when presented peripherally. Faces were presented in the left or right peripheral hemifields, which then gazed upward or downward. A target appeared in one of four oblique spatial locations giving the cue and target horizontal or vertical congruency, both, or neither. After establishing that peripheral movement and gaze direction jointly facilitate target processing at short durations (200 ms: Experiment 1), IOR was evident for peripheral motion at longer time courses (800 and 2400 ms: Experiment 2). Only after 2400 ms did gaze direction additionally contribute to IOR for the specific gazed at location, showing the inverse pattern of response times to Experiment 1. The onset of IOR for gaze cues is independent from peripheral exogenous cueing but nevertheless contributes to the allocation of attention.

The affordance-matching hypothesis: how objects guide action understanding and prediction

Prior research has often conceptualized this capacity in terms of a motoric matching of observed ... more Prior research has often conceptualized this capacity in terms of a motoric matching of observed actions to an action in one's motor repertoire, but has ignored the role of object information. In this manuscript, we set out an alternative conception of intention understanding, which places the role of objects as central to our observation and comprehension of the actions of others. We outline the current understanding of the interconnectedness of action and object knowledge, demonstrating how both rely heavily on the other. We then propose a novel framework, the affordance-matching hypothesis, which incorporates these findings into a simple model of action understanding, in which object knowledge-what an object is for and how it is used-can inform and constrain both action interpretation and prediction. We will review recent empirical evidence that supports such an object-based view of action understanding and we relate the affordance matching hypothesis to recent proposals that have re-conceptualized the role of mirror neurons in action understanding.

Anticipation of Action Intentions in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2011

We investigated whether individuals with a mild form of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are influe... more We investigated whether individuals with a mild form of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are influenced by an actor's gaze direction when anticipating how an observed action will continue in the immediate future. Participants observed a head rotate towards them, while the gaze direction was either leading, or lagging behind, rotation. They also observed identical rotations of a cylinder containing the geometrical equivalent of the gaze manipulation. The control group was influenced by the gaze manipulations for the animate but not the inanimate stimulus. The ASD group did not discriminate between the stimuli, showing a similar influence for both. This suggests that the ASD responses in the animate condition were biased by the low-level directional features of the eyes rather than by the conveyed intentions.

Predictive Action Perception from Explicit Intention Information in Autism

Social difficulties in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) may originate from an impaired top-down mod... more Social difficulties in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) may originate from an impaired top-down modulation of sensory information that prevents the spontaneous attribution of intentions to observed behaviour. However, although autistic people remain able to explicitly reason about others’ mental states, the effect of abstract intention information on perceptual processes has remained untested. We show that ASD participants (n=23) exhibit a predictive perceptual bias in the perception of other’s actions in response to prior knowledge of an actor’s intentions (“I’ll take it”, “I’ll leave it”), but not in response to the motion of the action itself (reach, withdrawal). Neurotypicals (n=23) exhibit a predictive bias in action perception due to both explicit high-level intention and low-level motion information. Perception in ASD is not immune from top-down modulation. However, the information must be explicitly presented independently from the stimulus itself, and not inferred from cues i...

Affordance matching predictively shapes the perceptual representation of others’ ongoing actions

Recent predictive processing models argue that action understanding is a predictive process, in w... more Recent predictive processing models argue that action understanding is a predictive process, in which goal inferences are constantly tested by comparing predictions of forthcoming behaviour against the actual perceptual input. In a recent series of studies, we showed that these predictions can be visible as a subtle shift in perceptual action judgments towards these inferred goals. Here we test whether this perceptual shift occurs even when goals are not explicitly given but have to be derived implicitly from the unfolding action kinematics. In two experiments, participants watched an actor reach towards a large object and a small object forming either a whole hand power grip or a precision grip. During its course, the hand suddenly disappeared, and participants made perceptual judgments about the last seen position on a touch screen. As predicted, judgments were consistently biased towards apparent action targets, such that power grips were perceived closer to large objects and pre...

Response: No need to match: a comment on Bach, Nicholson, and Hudson's "Affordance-Matching Hypothesis

Frontiers in human neuroscience, 2015

I see what you say: Prior knowledge of other's goals automatically biases the perception of their actions

Cognition, Jan 17, 2015

We investigated whether top-down expectations about an actor's intentions affect action perce... more We investigated whether top-down expectations about an actor's intentions affect action perception in a representational momentum (RM) paradigm. Participants heard an actor declare an intention to either take or leave an object and then saw him either reach for or withdraw from it, such that action and intention were either congruent or incongruent. Observers generally misperceived the hand's disappearance point further along the trajectory than it actually was, in line with the idea that action perception incorporates predictions of the action's future course. Importantly, this RM effect was larger for actions congruent with the actor's goals than for incongruent actions. These results demonstrate that action prediction integrates both current motion and top-down knowledge about the actor's intention. They support recent theories that emphasise the role of prior expectancies and prediction errors in social (and non-social) cognitive processing.

Doing, seeing, or both: Effects of learning condition on subsequent action perception

Social neuroscience, 2012

It has been proposed that common codes for vision and action emerge from associations between an ... more It has been proposed that common codes for vision and action emerge from associations between an individual's production and simultaneous observation of actions. This typically first-person view of one's own action subsequently transfers to the third-person view when observing another individual. We tested vision-action associations and the transfer from first-person to third-person perspective by comparing novel hand-action sequences that were learned under three conditions: first, by being performed and simultaneously viewed from a first-person perspective; second, by being performed but not seen; and third, by being seen from a first-person view without being executed. We then used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to compare the response to these three types of learned action sequences when they were presented from a third-person perspective. Visuomotor areas responded most strongly to sequences that were learned by simultaneously producing and observing the...

Brain Basis of Psychopathy in Criminal Offenders and General Population

Cerebral Cortex, 2021

Psychopathy is characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy, and egotistical... more Psychopathy is characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy, and egotistical traits. These traits vary also in normally functioning individuals. Here, we tested whether such antisocial personalities are associated with similar structural and neural alterations as those observed in criminal psychopathy. Subjects were 100 non-convicted well-functioning individuals, 19 violent male offenders, and 19 matched controls. Subjects underwent T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging and viewed movie clips with varying violent content during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Psychopathic traits were evaluated with Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (controls) and Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (offenders). Psychopathic offenders had lower gray matter density (GMD) in orbitofrontal cortex and anterior insula. In the community sample, affective psychopathy traits were associated with lower GMD in the same areas. Viewing violence increased brain activity in periaqueduct...

Perceptual teleology: expectations of action efficiency bias social perception

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2018

Primates interpret conspecific behaviour as goal-directed and expect others to achieve goals by t... more Primates interpret conspecific behaviour as goal-directed and expect others to achieve goals by the most efficient means possible. While this teleological stance is prominent in evolutionary and developmental theories of social cognition, little is known about the underlying mechanisms. In predictive models of social cognition, a perceptual prediction of an ideal efficient trajectory would be generated from prior knowledge against which the observed action is evaluated, distorting the perception of unexpected inefficient actions. To test this, participants observed an actor reach for an object with a straight or arched trajectory on a touch screen. The actions were made efficient or inefficient by adding or removing an obstructing object. The action disappeared mid-trajectory and participants touched the last seen screen position of the hand. Judgements of inefficient actions were biased towards the efficient prediction (straight trajectories upward to avoid the obstruction, arched ...

Cues to intention bias action perception toward the most efficient trajectory

Scientific Reports

Humans interpret others' behaviour as intentional and expect them to take the most energy-efficie... more Humans interpret others' behaviour as intentional and expect them to take the most energy-efficient path to achieve their goals. Recent studies show that these expectations of efficient action take the form of a prediction of an ideal "reference" trajectory, against which observed actions are evaluated, distorting their perceptual representation towards this expected path. Here we tested whether these predictions depend upon the implied intentionality of the stimulus. Participants saw videos of an actor reaching either efficiently (straight towards an object or arched over an obstacle) or inefficiently (straight towards obstacle or arched over empty space). The hand disappeared mid-trajectory and participants reported the last seen position on a touch-screen. As in prior research, judgments of inefficient actions were biased toward efficiency expectations (straight trajectories upwards to avoid obstacles, arched trajectories downward towards goals). In two further experimental groups, intentionality cues were removed by replacing the hand with a non-agentive ball (group 2), and by removing the action's biological motion profile (group 3). Removing these cues substantially reduced perceptual biases. Our results therefore confirm that the perception of others' actions is guided by expectations of efficient actions, which are triggered by the perception of semantic and motion cues to intentionality.

Brain Basis of Psychopathy in Criminal Offenders and General Population

Cerebral Cortex, 2021

Psychopathy is characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy, and egotistical... more Psychopathy is characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy, and egotistical traits. These traits vary also in normally functioning individuals. Here, we tested whether such antisocial personalities are associated with similar structural and neural alterations as those observed in criminal psychopathy. Subjects were 100 non-convicted well-functioning individuals, 19 violent male offenders, and 19 matched controls. Subjects underwent T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging and viewed movie clips with varying violent content during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Psychopathic traits were evaluated with Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (controls) and Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (offenders). Psychopathic offenders had lower gray matter density (GMD) in orbitofrontal cortex and anterior insula. In the community sample, affective psychopathy traits were associated with lower GMD in the same areas. Viewing violence increased brain activity in periaqueductal grey matter, thalamus, somatosensory, premotor, and temporal cortices. Psychopathic offenders had increased responses to violence in thalamus and orbitofrontal, insular, and cingulate cortices. In the community sample, impulsivity-related psychopathy traits were positively associated with violence-elicited responses in similar areas. We conclude that brain characteristics underlying psychopathic spectrum in violent psychopathy are related to those observed in well-functioning individuals with asocial personality features.

Predictive action perception from explicit intention information in autism

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2021

Social difficulties in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may originate from a reduced top-down modul... more Social difficulties in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may originate from a reduced top-down modulation of sensory information that prevents the spontaneous attribution of intentions to observed behaviour. However, although people with autism are able to explicitly reason about others' mental states, the effect of abstract intention information on perceptual processes has remained untested. ASD participants (n = 23) and a neurotypical (NT) control group (n = 23) observed a hand either reaching for an object or withdrawing from it. Prior to action onset, the participant either instructed the actor to "Take it" or "Leave it", or heard the actor state "I'll take it" or "I'll leave it", which provided an explicit intention that was equally likely to be congruent or incongruent with the subsequent action. The hand disappeared before completion of the action, and participants reported the last seen position of the tip of the index finger by touching the screen. NT participants exhibited a predictive bias in response to action direction (reaches perceived nearer the object, withdrawals perceived farther away), and in response to prior knowledge of the actor's intentions (nearer the object after "Take it", farther away after "Leave it"). However, ASD participants exhibited a predictive perceptual bias only in response to the explicit intentions, but not in response to the motion of the action itself. Perception in ASD is not immune from top-down modulation. However, the information must be explicitly presented independently from the stimulus itself, and not inferred from cues inherent in the stimulus.

Decoding Music-Evoked Emotions in the Auditory and Motor Cortex

Cerebral Cortex, 2021

Music can induce strong subjective experience of emotions, but it is debated whether these respon... more Music can induce strong subjective experience of emotions, but it is debated whether these responses engage the same neural circuits as emotions elicited by biologically significant events. We examined the functional neural basis of music-induced emotions in a large sample (n = 102) of subjects who listened to emotionally engaging (happy, sad, fearful, and tender) pieces of instrumental music while their hemodynamic brain activity was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Ratings of the four categorical emotions and liking were used to predict hemodynamic responses in general linear model (GLM) analysis of the fMRI data. Multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) was used to reveal discrete neural signatures of the four categories of music-induced emotions. To map neural circuits governing non-musical emotions, the subjects were scanned while viewing short emotionally evocative film clips. The GLM revealed that most emotions were associated with activity in the auditory, somatosensory, and motor cortices, cingulate gyrus, insula, and precuneus. Fear and liking also engaged the amygdala. In contrast, the film clips strongly activated limbic and cortical regions implicated in emotional processing. MVPA revealed that activity in the auditory cortex and primary motor cortices reliably discriminated the emotion categories. Our results indicate that different music-induced basic emotions have distinct representations in regions supporting auditory processing, motor control, and interoception but do not strongly rely on limbic and medial prefrontal regions critical for emotions with survival value.

The affordance-matching hypothesis: how objects guide action understanding and prediction

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2014

Action understanding lies at the heart of social interaction. Prior research has often conceptual... more Action understanding lies at the heart of social interaction. Prior research has often conceptualized this capacity in terms of a motoric matching of observed actions to an action in one's motor repertoire, but has ignored the role of object information. In this manuscript, we set out an alternative conception of intention understanding, which places the role of objects as central to our observation and comprehension of the actions of others. We outline the current understanding of the interconnectedness of action and object knowledge, demonstrating how both rely heavily on the other. We then propose a novel framework, the affordance-matching hypothesis, which incorporates these findings into a simple model of action understanding, in which object knowledge-what an object is for and how it is used-can inform and constrain both action interpretation and prediction. We will review recent empirical evidence that supports such an object-based view of action understanding and we relate the affordance matching hypothesis to recent proposals that have re-conceptualized the role of mirror neurons in action understanding.

Functional organization of social perception in the human brain

Humans rapidly extract diverse and complex information from ongoing social interactions, but the ... more Humans rapidly extract diverse and complex information from ongoing social interactions, but the perceptual and neural organization of the different aspects of social perception remains unresolved. We showed short film clips with rich social content to 97 healthy participants while their haemodynamic brain activity was measured with fMRI. The clips were annotated moment-to-moment for 112 social features. Cluster analysis revealed that 13 dimensions were sufficient for describing the social perceptual space. Regression analysis was used to map regional neural response profiles to different social features. Multivariate pattern analysis was then utilized to establish the spatial specificity of these responses. The results revealed a gradient in the processing of social information in the brain. Posterior temporal and occipital regions were broadly tuned to most social dimensions and the classifier revealed that these responses showed spatial specificity for social dimensions; in contr...

BRIEF REPORT One Step Ahead: The Perceived Kinematics of Others ’ Actions Are Biased Toward Expected Goals

Action observation is often conceptualized in a bottom-up manner, where sensory information activ... more Action observation is often conceptualized in a bottom-up manner, where sensory information activates conceptual (or motor) representations. In contrast, here we show that expectations about an actor’s goal have a top-down predictive effect on action perception, biasing it toward these goals. In 3 experiments, participants observed hands reach for or withdraw from objects and judged whether a probe stimulus corresponded to the hand’s final position. Before action onset, participants generated action expectations on the basis of either object types (safe or painful, Experiments 1 and 2) or abstract color cues (Experiment 3). Participants more readily mistook probes displaced in a predicted position (relative to unpredicted positions) for the hand’s final position, and this predictive bias was larger when the movement and expectation were aligned. These effects were evident for low-level movement and high-level goal expectancies. Expectations bias action observation toward the predict...

Anticipating action sequences based on the actor’s gaze direction in individuals with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder

Perception, 2010

Decoding music-evoked emotions in the auditory and motor cortex

Music can induce strong subjective experience of emotions, but it is debated whether these respon... more Music can induce strong subjective experience of emotions, but it is debated whether these responses engage the same neural circuits as emotions elicited by biologically significant events. We examined the functional neural basis of music-induced emotions in a large sample (n=102) of subjects who listened to emotionally engaging (happy, sad, fearful, and tender) pieces of instrumental music while their haemodynamic brain activity was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Ratings of the four categorical emotions and liking were used to predict haemodynamic responses in general linear model (GLM) analysis of the fMRI data. Multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) was used to reveal discrete neural signatures of the four categories of music-induced emotions. To map neural circuits governing non-musical emotions, the subjects were scanned while viewing short emotionally evocative film clips. The GLM revealed that most emotions were associated with activity in the audit...

One step ahead: The perceived kinematics of others’ actions are biased toward expected goals

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2016

Action observation is often conceptualized in a bottom-up manner, where sensory information activ... more Action observation is often conceptualized in a bottom-up manner, where sensory information activates conceptual (or motor) representations. In contrast, here we show that expectations about an actor's goal have a top-down predictive effect on action perception, biasing it toward these goals. In 3 experiments, participants observed hands reach for or withdraw from objects and judged whether a probe stimulus corresponded to the hand's final position. Before action onset, participants generated action expectations on the basis of either object types (safe or painful, Experiments 1 and 2) or abstract color cues (Experiment 3). Participants more readily mistook probes displaced in a predicted position (relative to unpredicted positions) for the hand's final position, and this predictive bias was larger when the movement and expectation were aligned. These effects were evident for low-level movement and high-level goal expectancies. Expectations bias action observation toward the predicted goals. These results challenge current bottom-up views and support recent predictive models of action observation.

Peripheral cues and gaze direction jointly focus attention and inhibition of return

Cognitive neuroscience, Jan 10, 2015

Centrally presented gaze cues typically elicit a delayed inhibition of return (IOR) effect compar... more Centrally presented gaze cues typically elicit a delayed inhibition of return (IOR) effect compared to peripheral exogenous cues. We investigated whether gaze cues elicit early onset IOR when presented peripherally. Faces were presented in the left or right peripheral hemifields, which then gazed upward or downward. A target appeared in one of four oblique spatial locations giving the cue and target horizontal or vertical congruency, both, or neither. After establishing that peripheral movement and gaze direction jointly facilitate target processing at short durations (200 ms: Experiment 1), IOR was evident for peripheral motion at longer time courses (800 and 2400 ms: Experiment 2). Only after 2400 ms did gaze direction additionally contribute to IOR for the specific gazed at location, showing the inverse pattern of response times to Experiment 1. The onset of IOR for gaze cues is independent from peripheral exogenous cueing but nevertheless contributes to the allocation of attention.

The affordance-matching hypothesis: how objects guide action understanding and prediction

Prior research has often conceptualized this capacity in terms of a motoric matching of observed ... more Prior research has often conceptualized this capacity in terms of a motoric matching of observed actions to an action in one's motor repertoire, but has ignored the role of object information. In this manuscript, we set out an alternative conception of intention understanding, which places the role of objects as central to our observation and comprehension of the actions of others. We outline the current understanding of the interconnectedness of action and object knowledge, demonstrating how both rely heavily on the other. We then propose a novel framework, the affordance-matching hypothesis, which incorporates these findings into a simple model of action understanding, in which object knowledge-what an object is for and how it is used-can inform and constrain both action interpretation and prediction. We will review recent empirical evidence that supports such an object-based view of action understanding and we relate the affordance matching hypothesis to recent proposals that have re-conceptualized the role of mirror neurons in action understanding.

Anticipation of Action Intentions in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2011

We investigated whether individuals with a mild form of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are influe... more We investigated whether individuals with a mild form of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are influenced by an actor's gaze direction when anticipating how an observed action will continue in the immediate future. Participants observed a head rotate towards them, while the gaze direction was either leading, or lagging behind, rotation. They also observed identical rotations of a cylinder containing the geometrical equivalent of the gaze manipulation. The control group was influenced by the gaze manipulations for the animate but not the inanimate stimulus. The ASD group did not discriminate between the stimuli, showing a similar influence for both. This suggests that the ASD responses in the animate condition were biased by the low-level directional features of the eyes rather than by the conveyed intentions.

Predictive Action Perception from Explicit Intention Information in Autism

Social difficulties in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) may originate from an impaired top-down mod... more Social difficulties in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) may originate from an impaired top-down modulation of sensory information that prevents the spontaneous attribution of intentions to observed behaviour. However, although autistic people remain able to explicitly reason about others’ mental states, the effect of abstract intention information on perceptual processes has remained untested. We show that ASD participants (n=23) exhibit a predictive perceptual bias in the perception of other’s actions in response to prior knowledge of an actor’s intentions (“I’ll take it”, “I’ll leave it”), but not in response to the motion of the action itself (reach, withdrawal). Neurotypicals (n=23) exhibit a predictive bias in action perception due to both explicit high-level intention and low-level motion information. Perception in ASD is not immune from top-down modulation. However, the information must be explicitly presented independently from the stimulus itself, and not inferred from cues i...

Affordance matching predictively shapes the perceptual representation of others’ ongoing actions

Recent predictive processing models argue that action understanding is a predictive process, in w... more Recent predictive processing models argue that action understanding is a predictive process, in which goal inferences are constantly tested by comparing predictions of forthcoming behaviour against the actual perceptual input. In a recent series of studies, we showed that these predictions can be visible as a subtle shift in perceptual action judgments towards these inferred goals. Here we test whether this perceptual shift occurs even when goals are not explicitly given but have to be derived implicitly from the unfolding action kinematics. In two experiments, participants watched an actor reach towards a large object and a small object forming either a whole hand power grip or a precision grip. During its course, the hand suddenly disappeared, and participants made perceptual judgments about the last seen position on a touch screen. As predicted, judgments were consistently biased towards apparent action targets, such that power grips were perceived closer to large objects and pre...

Response: No need to match: a comment on Bach, Nicholson, and Hudson's "Affordance-Matching Hypothesis

Frontiers in human neuroscience, 2015

I see what you say: Prior knowledge of other's goals automatically biases the perception of their actions

Cognition, Jan 17, 2015

We investigated whether top-down expectations about an actor's intentions affect action perce... more We investigated whether top-down expectations about an actor's intentions affect action perception in a representational momentum (RM) paradigm. Participants heard an actor declare an intention to either take or leave an object and then saw him either reach for or withdraw from it, such that action and intention were either congruent or incongruent. Observers generally misperceived the hand's disappearance point further along the trajectory than it actually was, in line with the idea that action perception incorporates predictions of the action's future course. Importantly, this RM effect was larger for actions congruent with the actor's goals than for incongruent actions. These results demonstrate that action prediction integrates both current motion and top-down knowledge about the actor's intention. They support recent theories that emphasise the role of prior expectancies and prediction errors in social (and non-social) cognitive processing.

Doing, seeing, or both: Effects of learning condition on subsequent action perception

Social neuroscience, 2012

It has been proposed that common codes for vision and action emerge from associations between an ... more It has been proposed that common codes for vision and action emerge from associations between an individual's production and simultaneous observation of actions. This typically first-person view of one's own action subsequently transfers to the third-person view when observing another individual. We tested vision-action associations and the transfer from first-person to third-person perspective by comparing novel hand-action sequences that were learned under three conditions: first, by being performed and simultaneously viewed from a first-person perspective; second, by being performed but not seen; and third, by being seen from a first-person view without being executed. We then used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to compare the response to these three types of learned action sequences when they were presented from a third-person perspective. Visuomotor areas responded most strongly to sequences that were learned by simultaneously producing and observing the...

Brain Basis of Psychopathy in Criminal Offenders and General Population

Cerebral Cortex, 2021

Psychopathy is characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy, and egotistical... more Psychopathy is characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy, and egotistical traits. These traits vary also in normally functioning individuals. Here, we tested whether such antisocial personalities are associated with similar structural and neural alterations as those observed in criminal psychopathy. Subjects were 100 non-convicted well-functioning individuals, 19 violent male offenders, and 19 matched controls. Subjects underwent T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging and viewed movie clips with varying violent content during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Psychopathic traits were evaluated with Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (controls) and Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (offenders). Psychopathic offenders had lower gray matter density (GMD) in orbitofrontal cortex and anterior insula. In the community sample, affective psychopathy traits were associated with lower GMD in the same areas. Viewing violence increased brain activity in periaqueduct...

Perceptual teleology: expectations of action efficiency bias social perception

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2018

Primates interpret conspecific behaviour as goal-directed and expect others to achieve goals by t... more Primates interpret conspecific behaviour as goal-directed and expect others to achieve goals by the most efficient means possible. While this teleological stance is prominent in evolutionary and developmental theories of social cognition, little is known about the underlying mechanisms. In predictive models of social cognition, a perceptual prediction of an ideal efficient trajectory would be generated from prior knowledge against which the observed action is evaluated, distorting the perception of unexpected inefficient actions. To test this, participants observed an actor reach for an object with a straight or arched trajectory on a touch screen. The actions were made efficient or inefficient by adding or removing an obstructing object. The action disappeared mid-trajectory and participants touched the last seen screen position of the hand. Judgements of inefficient actions were biased towards the efficient prediction (straight trajectories upward to avoid the obstruction, arched ...

Cues to intention bias action perception toward the most efficient trajectory

Scientific Reports

Humans interpret others' behaviour as intentional and expect them to take the most energy-efficie... more Humans interpret others' behaviour as intentional and expect them to take the most energy-efficient path to achieve their goals. Recent studies show that these expectations of efficient action take the form of a prediction of an ideal "reference" trajectory, against which observed actions are evaluated, distorting their perceptual representation towards this expected path. Here we tested whether these predictions depend upon the implied intentionality of the stimulus. Participants saw videos of an actor reaching either efficiently (straight towards an object or arched over an obstacle) or inefficiently (straight towards obstacle or arched over empty space). The hand disappeared mid-trajectory and participants reported the last seen position on a touch-screen. As in prior research, judgments of inefficient actions were biased toward efficiency expectations (straight trajectories upwards to avoid obstacles, arched trajectories downward towards goals). In two further experimental groups, intentionality cues were removed by replacing the hand with a non-agentive ball (group 2), and by removing the action's biological motion profile (group 3). Removing these cues substantially reduced perceptual biases. Our results therefore confirm that the perception of others' actions is guided by expectations of efficient actions, which are triggered by the perception of semantic and motion cues to intentionality.

Brain Basis of Psychopathy in Criminal Offenders and General Population

Cerebral Cortex, 2021

Psychopathy is characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy, and egotistical... more Psychopathy is characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy, and egotistical traits. These traits vary also in normally functioning individuals. Here, we tested whether such antisocial personalities are associated with similar structural and neural alterations as those observed in criminal psychopathy. Subjects were 100 non-convicted well-functioning individuals, 19 violent male offenders, and 19 matched controls. Subjects underwent T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging and viewed movie clips with varying violent content during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Psychopathic traits were evaluated with Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (controls) and Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (offenders). Psychopathic offenders had lower gray matter density (GMD) in orbitofrontal cortex and anterior insula. In the community sample, affective psychopathy traits were associated with lower GMD in the same areas. Viewing violence increased brain activity in periaqueductal grey matter, thalamus, somatosensory, premotor, and temporal cortices. Psychopathic offenders had increased responses to violence in thalamus and orbitofrontal, insular, and cingulate cortices. In the community sample, impulsivity-related psychopathy traits were positively associated with violence-elicited responses in similar areas. We conclude that brain characteristics underlying psychopathic spectrum in violent psychopathy are related to those observed in well-functioning individuals with asocial personality features.

Predictive action perception from explicit intention information in autism

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2021

Social difficulties in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may originate from a reduced top-down modul... more Social difficulties in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may originate from a reduced top-down modulation of sensory information that prevents the spontaneous attribution of intentions to observed behaviour. However, although people with autism are able to explicitly reason about others' mental states, the effect of abstract intention information on perceptual processes has remained untested. ASD participants (n = 23) and a neurotypical (NT) control group (n = 23) observed a hand either reaching for an object or withdrawing from it. Prior to action onset, the participant either instructed the actor to "Take it" or "Leave it", or heard the actor state "I'll take it" or "I'll leave it", which provided an explicit intention that was equally likely to be congruent or incongruent with the subsequent action. The hand disappeared before completion of the action, and participants reported the last seen position of the tip of the index finger by touching the screen. NT participants exhibited a predictive bias in response to action direction (reaches perceived nearer the object, withdrawals perceived farther away), and in response to prior knowledge of the actor's intentions (nearer the object after "Take it", farther away after "Leave it"). However, ASD participants exhibited a predictive perceptual bias only in response to the explicit intentions, but not in response to the motion of the action itself. Perception in ASD is not immune from top-down modulation. However, the information must be explicitly presented independently from the stimulus itself, and not inferred from cues inherent in the stimulus.

Decoding Music-Evoked Emotions in the Auditory and Motor Cortex

Cerebral Cortex, 2021

Music can induce strong subjective experience of emotions, but it is debated whether these respon... more Music can induce strong subjective experience of emotions, but it is debated whether these responses engage the same neural circuits as emotions elicited by biologically significant events. We examined the functional neural basis of music-induced emotions in a large sample (n = 102) of subjects who listened to emotionally engaging (happy, sad, fearful, and tender) pieces of instrumental music while their hemodynamic brain activity was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Ratings of the four categorical emotions and liking were used to predict hemodynamic responses in general linear model (GLM) analysis of the fMRI data. Multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) was used to reveal discrete neural signatures of the four categories of music-induced emotions. To map neural circuits governing non-musical emotions, the subjects were scanned while viewing short emotionally evocative film clips. The GLM revealed that most emotions were associated with activity in the auditory, somatosensory, and motor cortices, cingulate gyrus, insula, and precuneus. Fear and liking also engaged the amygdala. In contrast, the film clips strongly activated limbic and cortical regions implicated in emotional processing. MVPA revealed that activity in the auditory cortex and primary motor cortices reliably discriminated the emotion categories. Our results indicate that different music-induced basic emotions have distinct representations in regions supporting auditory processing, motor control, and interoception but do not strongly rely on limbic and medial prefrontal regions critical for emotions with survival value.

The affordance-matching hypothesis: how objects guide action understanding and prediction

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2014

Action understanding lies at the heart of social interaction. Prior research has often conceptual... more Action understanding lies at the heart of social interaction. Prior research has often conceptualized this capacity in terms of a motoric matching of observed actions to an action in one's motor repertoire, but has ignored the role of object information. In this manuscript, we set out an alternative conception of intention understanding, which places the role of objects as central to our observation and comprehension of the actions of others. We outline the current understanding of the interconnectedness of action and object knowledge, demonstrating how both rely heavily on the other. We then propose a novel framework, the affordance-matching hypothesis, which incorporates these findings into a simple model of action understanding, in which object knowledge-what an object is for and how it is used-can inform and constrain both action interpretation and prediction. We will review recent empirical evidence that supports such an object-based view of action understanding and we relate the affordance matching hypothesis to recent proposals that have re-conceptualized the role of mirror neurons in action understanding.