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Multimedia pedagogical agents are on-screen characters that allow users to navigate or learn in multimedia environments. Several agents’ characteristics may moderate their instructional effectiveness, including appearance, gender, nonverbal communication, motion, and voice. Here, we conducted a meta-analysis to test hypotheses from diverse theories predicting the effects of these agents’ characteristics. We tested predictions of cognitive load theory, cognitive theory of multimedia learning, computers are social actors, social agency theory, uncanny valley, and the action observation network. Our meta-analysis of 32 effect sizes (N = 2104) revealed a small overall effect (g+ = 0.20), showing that learning with multimedia pedagogical agents was more effective than learning without these agents. As predicted by the redundancy effect of cognitive load theory and the coherence principle of cognitive theory of multimedia learning, 2D agents (g+ = 0.38) tended to be more effective than 3D agents (g+ = 0.11). As predicted by the computers are social actors hypothesis, most of the agents’ characteristics, including nonverbal communication, motion, and voice, appeared not to moderate their effectiveness. We conclude that multimedia pedagogical agents help learning through multimedia, and that students may be able to learn similarly from different types of agents.

•The cerebellum interacts with the MNS to simulating and imitating observed actions.•Activation of MNS, prefrontal cortex, and cerebellum predicts imitation accuracy.•Bilateral cortico-cerebellar patterns improve prediction of imitation performance.•Connectivity between cerebellum, aIPS, and DLPFC enhances imitation ability.•The cerebellum plays a key role in generating predictive action representations. The ability to accurately imitate actions requires the contribution of the Mirror Neuron System (MNS) and of prefrontal and cerebellar regions. The present study aimed at investigating whether functional interaction between cortical areas and the cerebellum during the observation of complex bimanual actions can predict individual ability to imitate the same actions. Nineteen healthy participants underwent an fMRI task in which they observed complex bimanual action sequences (paper folding) and subsequently imitated the same sequences. Control conditions included passive observation of bimanual actions, observation of reaching movements, observation of actions without intent to imitate, and observation of natural landscapes. Participants’ imitation performance was video-recorded and scored for accuracy. Univariate whole-brain regression, multivariate pattern recognition, and generalized psychophysiological interaction analyses were used to assess whether activation patterns during the observation phase could predict subsequent imitation performance. The results showed that: (i) observing actions during the imitation condition activated parietal, premotor, prefrontal cortex, and lateral cerebellum; (ii) activation levels in the left anterior intraparietal sulcus (aIPS), ventral premotor cortex (PMv), dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), and right lateral cerebellum (CB VI) predicted imitation accuracy; (iii) a bilateral distribution pattern involving aIPS, PMv, DLPFC, and CB VI better predicted imitation performance than a whole-brain approach; (iv) increased effective connectivity between the right CB VI, left aIPS, and left DLPFC during observation-to-imitate condition correlated with higher imitation accuracy. These findings underscore the role of the cerebellum within the MNS in simulating observed actions and enabling their accurate reproduction.

Observing the actions of others activates the action observation network (AON). Although previous studies have reported that motor experience and visual familiarity with an observed action can modulate the AON activity, the response of the AON to the observation of unusual walking patterns remains unclear. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the brain activity induced by observing walking in a split-belt condition, where the left and right treadmill belt speeds differ. We examined the brain activity during the observation of video clips showing normal walking under a tied condition (the same left and right treadmill speeds) as well as walking during the initial and late periods of a split-belt condition using functional magnetic resonance imaging in 19 healthy adults. The step lengths of the actor walking in the video clips were asymmetric during the initial period of the split-belt condition and nearly symmetric during the tied condition and late period of the split-belt condition. Observing the walking video clips activated broad regions of the occipito-temporo-parietal and frontal cortices, irrespective of the clip conditions. The contrasts between the conditions revealed that observing walking in the initial and late periods of the split-belt condition induced stronger activation in a subset of the AON than in the tied condition. These results suggest that observing unusual walking patterns under asymmetric speed condition induces a stronger AON activity than normal walking.

•Visuomotor PAS drives the emergence of atypical corticospinal motor resonance at the cost of the typical response.•Typical motor resonance is characterized by prominent alpha-band and reduced beta-band M1-connectivity.•PAS-induced motor resonance is specifically supported by beta-band M1 cortical networks.•Sensorimotor learning within the action observation network exploits connectivity mechanisms distinct from those established throughout lifetime experience. Motor resonance – the facilitation of corticospinal excitability during action observation – is considered a proxy of Action Observation Network (AON) recruitment in humans, with profound implications for social cognition and action understanding. Despite extensive research, the neural underpinnings supporting motor resonance emergence and rewriting remain unexplored. In this study, we investigated the role of sensorimotor associative learning in neural mechanisms underlying the motor resonance phenomenon. To this aim, we applied cross-systems paired associative stimulation (PAS) to induce novel visuomotor associations in the human brain. This protocol, which repeatedly pairs transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) pulses over the primary motor cortex (M1) with visual stimuli of actions, drives the emergence of an atypical, PAS-conditioned motor resonance response. Using TMS and electroencephalography (EEG) co-registration during action observation, we tracked the M1 functional connectivity profile during this process to map the inter-areal connectivity profiles associated with typical and PAS-induced motor resonance phenomena. Besides confirming, at the corticospinal level, the emergence of newly acquired motor resonance responses at the cost of typical ones after PAS administration, our results reveal dissociable aspects of motor resonance in M1 interregional communication. On the one side, typical motor resonance effects acquired through the lifespan are associated with prominent M1 alpha-band and reduced beta-band connectivity, which might facilitate the corticospinal output while integrating visuomotor information. Conversely, the atypical PAS-induced motor resonance is linked to M1 beta-band cortical connectivity modulations, only partially overlapping with interregional communication patterns related to the typical mirroring responses. This evidence suggests that beta-phase synchronization may be the critical mechanism supporting the formation of motor resonance by coordinating the activity of motor regions during action observation, which also involves alpha-band top-down control of frontal areas. These findings provide new insights into the neural dynamics underlying (typical and newly acquired) motor resonance, highlighting the role of large-scale interregional communication in sensorimotor associative learning within the AON.

Hierarchical models have been proposed to explain how the brain encodes actions, whereby different areas represent different features, such as gesture kinematics, target object, action goal, and meaning. The visual processing of action‐related information is distributed over a well‐known network of brain regions spanning separate anatomical areas, attuned to specific stimulus properties, and referred to as action observation network (AON). To determine the brain organization of these features, we measured representational geometries during the observation of a large set of transitive and intransitive gestures in two independent functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments. We provided evidence for a partial dissociation between kinematics, object characteristics, and action meaning in the occipito‐parietal, ventro‐temporal, and lateral occipito‐temporal cortex, respectively. Importantly, most of the AON showed low specificity to all the explored features, and representational spaces sharing similar information content were spread across the cortex without being anatomically adjacent. Overall, our results support the notion that the AON relies on overlapping and distributed coding and may act as a unique representational space instead of mapping features in a modular and segregated manner. By measuring representational geometries during action observation, we provided evidence supporting the notion that the action observation network relies on distributed and overlapping coding: the AON representational content did not depend on proximity constraints, as anatomically distant areas shared similar tunings and considerable overlap was found between voxels response to all the explored action features.

Whether in performing arts, sporting, or everyday contexts, when we watch others move, we tend to enjoy bodies moving in synchrony. Our enjoyment of body movements is further enhanced by our own prior experience with performing those movements, or our ‘embodied experience’. The relationships between movement synchrony and enjoyment, as well as embodied experience and movement enjoyment, are well known. The interaction between enjoyment of movements, synchrony, and embodiment is less well understood, and may be central for developing new approaches for enriching social interaction. To examine the interplay between movement enjoyment, synchrony, and embodiment, we asked participants to copy another person's movements as accurately as possible, thereby gaining embodied experience of movement sequences. Participants then viewed other dyads performing the same or different sequences synchronously, and we assessed participants' recognition of having performed these sequences, as well as their enjoyment of each movement sequence. We used functional near‐infrared spectroscopy to measure cortical activation over frontotemporal sensorimotor regions while participants performed and viewed movements. We found that enjoyment was greatest when participants had mirrored the sequence and recognised it, suggesting that awareness of embodiment may be central to enjoyment of synchronous movements. Exploratory analyses of relationships between cortical activation and enjoyment and recognition implicated the sensorimotor cortices, which subserve action observation and aesthetic processing. These findings hold implications for clinical research and therapies seeking to foster successful social interaction. We examine how embodiment gained through physically mirroring another person's movements can modulate observers' enjoyment of synchronous movements performed by dyads. The findings demonstrate how observers' ability to recognize movement sequences they have mirrored (i.e., embodied), predicts their enjoyment of the same movements performed synchronously by others, and further predicts activation of sensorimotor brain areas associated movement prediction and matching (i.e., imitation).

Although robots are becoming an ever-growing presence in society, we do not hold the same expectations for robots as we do for humans, nor do we treat them the same. As such, the ability to recognize cues to human animacy is fundamental for guiding social interactions. We review literature that demonstrates cortical networks associated with person perception, action observation and mentalizing are sensitive to human animacy information. In addition, we show that most prior research has explored stimulus properties of artificial agents (humanness of appearance or motion), with less investigation into knowledge cues (whether an agent is believed to have human or artificial origins). Therefore, currently little is known about the relationship between stimulus and knowledge cues to human animacy in terms of cognitive and brain mechanisms. Using fMRI, an elaborate belief manipulation, and human and robot avatars, we found that knowledge cues to human animacy modulate engagement of person perception and mentalizing networks, while stimulus cues to human animacy had less impact on social brain networks. These findings demonstrate that self–other similarities are not only grounded in physical features but are also shaped by prior knowledge. More broadly, as artificial agents fulfil increasingly social roles, a challenge for roboticists will be to manage the impact of pre-conceived beliefs while optimizing human-like design.

The mirror neuron system consists of fronto-parietal regions and responds to both goal-directed action execution and observation. The broader action observation network is specifically involved in observation of actions and is thought to play a role in understanding the goals of the motor act, the intention of others, empathy, and language. Many, but not all, studies have found mirror neuron system or action observation network dysfunction in autism spectrum disorder. The objective of this study was to use observation of a goal-directed action fMRI paradigm to examine the action observation network in autism spectrum disorder and to determine whether fronto-parietal activation is associated with language ability. Adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (n = 23) were compared to typically developing adolescents (n = 20), 11–17 years. Overall, there were no group differences in activation, however, the autism spectrum group with impaired expressive language (n = 13) had significantly reduced inferior frontal and inferior parietal activation during action viewing. In controls, right supramarginal gyrus activation was associated with higher expressive language; bilateral supramarginal and left pars opercularis activation was associated with better verbal-gesture integration. Results suggest that action-observation network dysfunction may characterize a subgroup of individuals with autism spectrum disorder with expressive language deficits. Therefore, interventions that target this dysfunctional network may improve expressive language in this autism spectrum subgroup. Future treatment studies should individualize therapeutic approaches based on brain-behavior relationships.

How the temporal dynamics of social interactions are perceived arguably plays an important role in how one engages in social interactions and how difficulties in establishing smooth social interactions may occur. One aspect of temporal dynamics in social interactions is the mutual coordination of individuals' behaviors during social interaction, otherwise known as behavioral interpersonal synchrony (IPS). Behavioral IPS has been studied increasingly in various contexts, such as a feature of the social interaction difficulties inherent to autism. To fully understand the temporal dynamics of social interactions, or reductions thereof in autism, the neural basis of IPS perception needs to be established. Thus, the current study's aim was twofold: to establish the basic neuro‐perceptual processing of IPS in social interactions for typical observers and to test whether it might differ for autistic individuals. In a task‐based fMRI paradigm, participants viewed short, silent video vignettes of humans during social interactions featuring a variation of behavioral IPS. The results show that observing behavioral IPS modulates the Action Observation Network (AON). Interestingly, autistic participants showed similar neural activation patterns as non‐autistic participants which were modulated by the behavioral IPS they observed in the videos, suggesting that the perception of temporal dynamics of social interactions is spared and may not underly reduced behavioral IPS often observed in autism. Nevertheless, a general difference in processing social interactions was found in autistic observers, characterized by decreased neural activation in the right middle frontal gyrus, angular gyrus, and superior temporal areas. These findings demonstrate that although the autistic and non‐autistic groups indeed differed in the neural processing of social interaction perception, the temporal dynamics of these social interactions were not the reason for these differences in social interaction perception in autism. Hence, spared recruitment of the AON for processing temporal dynamics of social interactions in autism does not account for the widely reported attenuation of IPS in autism and for the widely reported and presently observed differences in social interaction perception in autism. Using task‐based fMRI, we investigated the neural basis of interpersonal synchrony (IPS) perception. Our findings show that IPS modulates neural activation in the Action Observation Network when individuals observed human social interactions. These activation patterns were comparable for autistic and non‐autistic individuals, suggesting that IPS perception is spared in autism.

Brain activity in the action observation network (AON) is lateralized during action execution, with greater activation in the contralateral hemisphere to the side of the body used to perform the task. However, it is unknown whether the AON is also lateralized when watching another person perform an action. In this study, we use fNIRS to measure brain activity over the left and right cortex while participants completed actions with their left and right hands and watched an actor complete action with their left and right hands. We show that while activation is lateralized when the participants themselves are moving, brain lateralization is not affected by the side of the body when the participant is observing another person’s action. In addition, we demonstrate that individual differences in hand preference and dexterity between the right and left hands are related to brain lateralization patterns.