Effects of short-term experience on anticipatory eye movements during action observation

Corina Möller, Hubert D. Zimmer, Gisa Aschersleben

Recent studies have shown that anticipatory eye movements occur during both action observation and action execution. These findings strongly support the direct matching hypothesis, which states that in observing others' actions, people take advantage of the same action knowledge that enables them to perform the same actions. Furthermore, a connection between action experience and the ability to anticipate action goals has been proposed. Concerning the role of experience, most studies concentrated on motor experts such as athletes and musicians, whereas only few studies investigated whether motor programs can be activated by short-term experience. Applying a pre-post design, we examined whether short-term experience affects anticipatory eye movements during observation. Participants (N = 150 university students) observed scenes showing an actor performing a block stacking task. Subsequently, participants performed either a block stacking task, puzzles, or a pursuit rotor task. Afterward, participants were again provided with the aforementioned block stacking task scenes. Results revealed that the block stacking task group directed their gaze significantly earlier toward the action goals of the block stacking task during posttest trials, compared with Puzzle and pursuit rotor task groups, which did not differ from each other. In accordance with the direct matching hypothesis, our study provides evidence that short-term experience with the block stacking task activates task-specific action knowledge.