Regulation of automatic imitation: Domain-specific versus domain-general control processes

The tendency to automatically imitate others' behavior is well documented. Successful interactions with others require some control of automatic imitation, but the nature of these control mechanisms remains unclear. The present study investigated whether the regulation of automatic imitation involves domain-specific versus domain-general control processes. Automatic imitation was assessed using the imitation-inhibition task, in which participants responded to an imperative stimulus with finger movements while seeing imitatively congruent versus incongruent, task-irrelevant movements. In Experiment 1, the imitatively congruent/incongruent trials ratio was manipulated, and increasing the amount of incongruent trials reduced the imitative congruency effect-as typically observed in "nonsocial" conflict tasks. In Experiment 2a, the imitation-inhibition task was intermixed with the Simon (spatial congruency) task. The ratio of spatially congruent/incongruent trials in the Simon task was varied while keeping the ratio of imitatively congruent/incongruent trials constant. Results indicate that increasing the amount of Simon conflict reduced both Simon and imitative congruency effects. Thus, control adaptations related to Simon congruency transferred to automatic imitation. In Experiments 2b and 3, the manipulation of the proportion of incongruent trials in the imitation-inhibition task did not exert an influence on the Simon effect. We discuss the domain-specific versus domain-general nature of the mechanisms regulating imitation in the light of these conflicting findings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).