Movement observation affects movement execution in a simple response task

The present study was designed to examine the hypothesis that stimulus-resp onse arrangements with high ideomotor compatibility lead to substantial com patibility effects even in simple response tasks. In Experiment 1, particip ants executed pre-instructed finger movements in response to compatible and incompatible finger movements. A pronounced reaction time advantage was fo und for compatible as compared to incompatible trials. Experiment 2 reveale d a much smaller compatibility effect for less ideomotor-compatible object movements compared to finger movements. Experiment 3 presented normal stimu li (hand upright) and flipped stimuli (hand upside-down). Two components we re found to contribute to the compatibility effect, a dynamic spatial compa tibility component (related to movement directions) and an ideomotor compon ent (related to movement types). The implications of these results for theo ries about stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) as well as for theories ab out imitation are discussed. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights rese rved. PsycINFO classification: 2340.