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Abstract

Current theories on action understanding suggest a cross-talk between the motor and the visual system during the recognition of other persons'actions. We examined the effect of the motor execution on the visual recognition of dynamic emotional facial expressions using an adaptation paradigm. Previous research on facial expression adaptation has shown that the prolonged visual exposure to a static facial expression biases the percept of an ambiguous static facial expression away from the adapted facial expression. We used a dynamic 3D computational face model (Curio et al, 2010, MIT Press, 47-65) to examine motor-visual interactions in the recognition of happy and fearful facial expressions. During the adaptation phase participants (1) looked for a prolonged amount of time at a facial expression (visual adaptation); (2) executed repeatedly a facial expression (motor adaptation); (3) imagined the emotion corresponding to a facial expression (imagine adaptor). In the test phase participants always had to judge an ambiguous facial expression as either happy or fearful. We found an adaptation effect in the visual adaptation condition, and the reversed effect (priming effect) in the motor and imagine condition. Inconsistent with simple forms of motor resonance, this shows antagonistic influences of visual and motor adaptation.