Individual differences and motor planning influence self-recognition of actions

Although humans can recognize their body movements in point-light displays, self-recognition ability varies substantially across action types and participants. Are these variations primarily due to an awareness of visually distinct movement patterns, or to underlying factors related to motoric planning and/or individual differences? To address this question, we conducted a large-scale study in self-action recognition (N = 101). We motion captured whole-body movements of participants who performed 27 different actions across action goals and degree of motor planning. After a long delay period (~ 1 month), participants were tested in a self-recognition task: identifying their point-light action amongst three other point-light actors performing identical actions. We report a self-advantage effect from point-light actions, consistent with prior work in self-action recognition. Further, we found that self-recognition was modulated by the action complexity (associated with the degree of motor planning in performed actions) and individual differences linked to motor imagery and subclinical autism and schizotypy. Using dynamic time warping, we found sparse evidence in support of visual distinctiveness as a primary contributor to self-recognition, though speed distinctiveness negatively influenced self-recognition performance. Together, our results reveal that self-action recognition involves more than an awareness of visually distinct movements, with important implications for how the motor system may be involved.