Krishnan-Barman, Sujatha;
(2021)
Adults imitate to send a social signal.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
Humans are prolific imitators, even when copying may not be efficient. A variety of explanations have been advanced for this phenomenon, including that it is a side-effect of learning, that it arises from a lack of understanding of causality, to imitation being a mechanism to boost affiliation. This thesis systematically outlines the hypothesis that imitation is a social signal sent between interacting partners, which rests on testing whether our propensity to imitate is modulated by the social availability of the interaction partner (i.e., whether our interaction partner is watching us or not). I developed a dyadic block-moving paradigm that allowed us to test this hypothesis in a naturalistic manner in four behavioural and neuroimaging studies using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). I found that imitative fidelity was modulated by whether the interaction partner was watching the participant make their move or not, and this effect replicated across all four studies, in both neurotypicals and autistic participants. I also examined the neural correlates of responding to irrational actions, and of being watched. I found that being watched led to a robust deactivation in the right parietal cortex across both neurotypicals (in two studies) and autistic participants (one study). Among autistic participants we also found strong engagement in the left superior temporal sulcus (STS) when being watched. For responding to irrational actions, in one study of neurotypicals we found greater deactivation in the right superior parietal lobule (SPL) when making more irrational responses. In another study of autistic and neurotypical participants we found deactivation in the bilateral inferior parietal cortex (IPL) in neurotypicals when responding to irrational actions, while this deactivation appeared confined to the left IPL for autistic participants. Autistic participants also showed differentially higher engagement in the left occipitotemporal regions when responding to irrational actions. This thesis supports the social-signalling hypothesis of imitation and is accompanied by suggestions for future directions to explore this theory in more detail.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Adults imitate to send a social signal |
| Event: | UCL (University College London) |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2021. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10133977 |
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