Perception/action coupling is modulated by the age-related motor skills of the agent performing the action

The perception/action coupling, underpinned by Mirror Neurons, allows the understanding of others’ action goal and intention picked up from cues conveyed by the individual’s kinematics and the context of the action. This mechanism can be modulated by familiarity with the observed action, by motor experience and motor expertise for that action, but could it be modulated by the age-related motor skills of the agent performing the action? We used an eye-tracking visual preference paradigm to study the modulation of perception/action coupling in 62 adults when viewing videos of daily actions presented in a forward reading direction or, for the same action, in a backward reading direction. Video actions were performed by young actors aged 4, 8, and 13 years and by adults. We found greater pupil dilation for all backward videos compared to forward videos. Interestingly, pupil dilation was greater for the forward videos with child actors than for those with adolescent/adult actors. An overall comparison of looking times during the preference phase did not reveal a preference for either video but testing for a context effect revealed a preference for backward videos when the last video observed in the exposure phase was forward. This study demonstrated the influence of the agent’s age-related motor abilities on the observer’s perception/action coupling and revealed that pupil dilation and the context effect could be relevant cues for exploring this coupling in a non-invasive, passive experimental setup that is particularly suitable for exploring perception/action coupling in very young children with a developmental disorder.