Action observation triggers by default a mental simulation of action unfolding in time. We assumed that this simulation is “embodied”: the body is the medium through which observer’s sensorimotor modalities simulate the observed action. The participants in two experiments observed videos, each depicting the central part of an action performed by an actress on an object (e.g., answering the phone) and soon after each video they observed a photo portraying a state of the action not observed in the video, either depicting the initial part or the final part of the whole action. Their task was to evaluate whether the photo portrayed something before (backward photo) or after the action in the video (forward photo). Results showed that evaluation of forward photos was faster than evaluation of backward photos (Experiment 1). Crucially, participants’ body posture modulated this effect: keeping the hands crossed behind the back interfered with forward simulations (Experiment 2). These results speak about the role of the observer’s body posture in processing other people’s actions.

默认情况下，动作观察会触发对动作及时展开的心理模拟。我们假设这种模拟是“具身化”的：身体是观察者的感觉运动模式模拟观察到的动作的媒介。两个实验的参与者观察了视频，每个视频都描述了女演员对一个物体执行的动作的中心部分（例如，接电话），并且在每个视频之后不久，他们观察了一张照片，描绘了视频中未观察到的动作状态，描绘整个动作的开始部分或结束部分。他们的任务是评估照片是在视频中的动作之前（向后照片）还是之后（向前照片）描绘了某些东西。结果表明，对前向照片的评价比对后向照片的评价快（实验 1）。至关重要的是，参与者的身体姿势调节了这种效果：保持双手交叉在背后干扰了向前的模拟（实验 2）。这些结果说明了观察者的身体姿势在处理其他人的动作中的作用。