Biology subjects

Fanghella, M.

Publications and source records attributed to Fanghella, M..

4 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

Rational Expectations and Kinematic Information in Coordination Games

Successful coordination often requires integrating strategic reasoning with real-time observations of others actions, yet how humans resolve conflicts between these information sources remains unclear. This study aimed to fill this gap by examining how people coordinate in a strategic game when observing partial kinematic information from their partners actions. Participants played a HI-LO game with a virtual partner, choosing payoffs based on grasping movements toward invisible large and small targets. Hand movements were presented as schematic animations, with partners grasping targets linked to higher or lower payoffs across two configurations. Participants relied exclusively on kinematic cues from hand shape changes in maximum grip aperture to infer their partners choices. There were two main findings. While participants preferred higher payoffs consistent with rational game-theoretic expectations, reliable kinematic cues overrode these expectations. When early grip aperture changes indicated the partner was reaching for a large target associated with a lower payoff, participants abandoned their default preference for higher payoffs. They chose the lower option instead, achieving a high coordination success rate. These findings demonstrate that people prioritize kinematic cues about others choices over theoretical assumptions about rational behavior when coordinating. This suggests that movement-based inferences about others actions in natural social interactions may be weighted more heavily than strategic reasoning when the two sources of information conflict.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2025

EARLY TARGET PREDICTION IN ACTION OBSERVATION

Previous research has established that observers can predict action targets through hand preshaping. However, two critical questions remain unexplored: how predictions adapt to the available kinematic information and evolve throughout the movement timeline. We address these fundamental gaps by combining kinematic analysis with machine-learning approaches that differentiate between motor and visual cues. Using motion capture technology, we recorded reach-to-grasp actions toward large and small objects and had participants predict target size from hand kinematics at varying time points. Our analysis revealed that prediction performance not only evolved with increasing kinematic information but, crucially, differed significantly between target size choices. To provide insight into the underlying processes, we developed a comparative framework using two distinct machine learning approaches: Support Vector Machines (SVM) modeling kinematic information and CNN-RNN networks extracting visual patterns. The stronger alignment between human performance and SVM predictions offers empirical evidence that kinematic cues, rather than visual patterns, mostly guide target prediction. These findings advance our understanding of action prediction and have significant implications for social cognition and human-machine interaction. PUBLIC SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTUnderstanding others intentions by observing their hand movements is crucial for social interaction, from passing objects to coordinating complex tasks. This study reveals that people use different cues to predict whether someone is reaching for a large versus a small object from the earliest stages of hand movement. By comparing human performance with Artificial Intelligence models, we found that people primarily rely on motor cues to make these predictions. These insights could improve rehabilitation techniques for individuals with social interaction difficulties and enhance the design of intuitive robotic assistants.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2025

How Acting Jointly Differs from Acting Side-by-Side: A Dual EEG Study

The distinction between acting jointly and acting side by side permeates our daily lives and is crucial for understanding the evolution and development of human sociality. While acting in parallel involves agents pursuing individual goals, acting jointly requires them to share a collective goal. Here, we used a dual electroencephalography (EEG) approach to explore the neural dynamics underlying joint and parallel action preparation. We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) from 20 dyads while they had to transport an object in a video game, either jointly or in parallel, or individually. Both conditions were carefully matched for coordination demands and performance complexity, as confirmed by equal success rates. Our results revealed a distinctive pattern swap in ERPs during action preparation. In the early preparation phase, ERPs showed significantly higher amplitude during joint action than parallel action. This pattern reversed in the late preparation phase, with significantly reduced ERP amplitude in the joint compared to parallel action. Notably, the decrease in late ERPs correlated with higher reaction time (RT) variability in partners but not with participants own RT variability. The dynamic swap in neural activity suggests that different cognitive processes operate at distinct stages of action preparation. While initially sharing a collective goal may impose cognitive costs (reflected in higher early ERPs), this is offset by facilitated late action preparation, likely due to enhanced predictability of partners actions. Significance StatementOur study reveals distinct neural signatures differentiating joint from side-by-side actions. Through dual EEG recordings of twenty dyads performing complexity-matched tasks, we identified a distinctive "swap" in event-related potentials during action preparation. Joint actions initially showed higher early-phase amplitudes but significantly reduced late-phase amplitudes compared to parallel actions. Notably, this late-phase reduction correlated specifically with the variability of partners behavior. This suggests that sharing collective goals initially requires cognitive resources but facilitates action preparation through enhanced predictability of partners. These findings provide a neural framework for understanding the distinction between acting jointly and acting in parallel --a distinction that pervades our daily experiences and is crucial for understanding the development and evolution of human sociality.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2024

DOES EXPERIENCE MODULATE AUTOMATIC IMITATION? A NEW LOOK

Automatic imitation is a stimulus-response compatibility effect wherein observing an action automatically influences motor performance. However, the mechanism underlying this effect remains controversial. Associative Sequence Learning suggests that automatic imitation arises from contingent visual and motor activity associations. Prior studies have shown that exposure to counter-imitative training can alter these visuomotor associations, suggesting that automatic imitation can be modulated by experience. Here, we aim to bring new insight into how this modulation occurs by exploring the time course of automatic imitation before and after counter-imitative training. If automatic imitation is merely a result of contingent associations, as previously suggested, the effect should consistently be modulated following such training. However, if this is not the case, automatic imitation is not, or not only, a matter of contingent association, at least not as currently understood.

neuroscience↗