Movement observation affects movement execution in a simple response task

The present study was designed to examine the hypothesis that stimulus-response arrangements with high ideomotor compatibility lead to substantial compatibility effects even in simple response tasks. In Experiment 1, participants executed pre-instructed finger movements in response to compatible and incompatible finger movements. A pronounced reaction time advantage was found for compatible as compared to incompatible trials. Experiment 2 revealed a much smaller compatibility effect for less ideomotor-compatible object movements compared to finger movements. Experiment 3 presented normal stimuli (hand upright) and flipped stimuli (hand upside-down). Two components were found to contribute to the compatibility effect, a dynamic spatial compatibility component (related to movement directions) and an ideomotor component (related to movement types). The implications of these results for theories about stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) as well as for theories about imitation are discussed.