Does experience modulate automatic imitation? A new look

Francesca Genovese, Martina Fanghella, Corrado Sinigaglia and Guido Barchiesi

PLOS ONE, 2026, vol. 21, issue 9, 1-16

Abstract: Automatic imitation is a stimulus-response compatibility effect wherein observing an action automatically influences motor performance. However, the mechanism underlying this effect remains controversial. Associative Sequence Learning suggests that automatic imitation arises from contingent visual and motor activity associations. Prior studies have shown that exposure to counter-imitative training can alter these visuomotor associations, suggesting that automatic imitation can be modulated by experience. Here, we aim to bring new insight into how this modulation occurs by exploring the time course of automatic imitation before and after counter-imitative training. If automatic imitation is merely a result of contingent associations, as previously suggested, the effect should consistently be modulated following such training. However, our findings show that automatic imitation is not significantly reduced after counter-imitative training at all the tested time points. This suggests that automatic imitation does not depend on contingent association, at least not as currently understood.

Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0357821 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 57821&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0357821

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0357821

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().