Dupont, Héloise
[UCL]
Edwards, Martin
[UCL]
Our observations permit to predict actions of others and so to interact correctly with them. Different studies investigate the cues used to observe and predict an action. The gaze of the agent, his hand preshape and the trajectory of the action have been studied and called bottom-up information. Thanks to those cues, our own motor representation of the observed action are activated in our brain and allow us to make a prediction about the outcome of the action. This activation is due to the mirror neurons, they are special neurons who become activated both when observing an action and when the observer is doing the same action. However, different authors pointed the effect of a top-down process consisting in the integration of higher information such as the context. The effect of the context has been mainly studied in object and action recognition tasks. This master thesis wants to understand the role of the context in action prediction and action observation. The context includes different factors such as objects, past experience, environment and expectations about the agent. The main question addressed is: does the context have an impact on action observation and action prediction? In order correctly answer this question, the major experiment used a prediction task of action observation videos. The context was manipulated with object’s knowledge and expectations about the agent. The manipulation of object’s knowledge was done with objects with different desirability chosen thanks to a questionnaire. Eye movements were recorded with an eye tracker. Results showed an effect of object’s knowledge on action prediction and an effect of the gaze’s agent on action observation. Results are discussed and interpreted in light with action observation theory. Limitations of this master thesis will be addressed. The end of this work will be focused on how we can differently study the effect of the context on action prediction in the future.


Bibliographic reference |
Dupont, Héloise. Action prediction from contextual action observation. Faculté de psychologie et des sciences de l'éducation, Université catholique de Louvain, 2017. Prom. : Edwards, Martin. |
Permanent URL |
http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/thesis:11869 |