Reaching to Grasp Cognition: Analyzing Motor Behavior to Investigate Social Interactions

• Main Author: Maurizio Gentilucci (auth)
• Other Authors: Claudia Gianelli (auth)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media SA 2018
• Series: Frontiers Research Topics
• Subjects: Psychology; Joint Action; social cognition; complementary actions; action observation; Imitation; kinematics; Embodied Cognition; Cooperation and competition
• Online Access: DOAB: download the publication; DOAB: description of the publication

How humans plan and execute their actions has always been a fascinating topic for neuroscience and psychology. In particular, kinematics studies have contributed to shed light on how very basic actions (e.g. reaching-grasping) are affected by manipulating target properties, visually or linguistically presented stimuli, absence or presence of contextual information. Interestingly, recent studies have also shown how the social context in which actions take place and their relevance for human interactions can also affect the execution of very simple actions. This research topic aims to bring together researchers from psychology and neuroscience with a special focus on the use of kinematics analysis for the study of socially relevant aspects of cognition (e.g. action observation, competition/cooperation, complementary actions, coordination, shared emotions and so on).