People often learn actions by watching others. The authors propose and test the hypothesis that perspective taking promotes encoding a hierarchical representation of an actor's goals and subgoals-a key process for observational learning. Observers segmented videos of an object assembly task into coarse and fine action units. They described what…

Can observational learning be effector dependent? In 3 experiments, observers watched a model respond to a 6-item unique sequence in a serial reaction time task. Their sequence knowledge was then compared with that of controls who had performed an unrelated task or observed a model responding to random targets. Observational learning was indicated…

Clear and unequivocal evidence shows that observation of object affordances or transitive actions facilitates the activation of a compatible response. By contrast, the evidence showing response facilitation following observation of intransitive actions is less conclusive because automatic imitation and spatial compatibility have been confounded.…

In separate studies, observers viewed upright biological motion, inverted biological motion, or arbitrary motion created from systematically randomizing the positions of point-light dots. Results showed that observers (a) could learn to detect the presence of arbitrary motion, (b) could not learn to discriminate the coherence of arbitrary motion,…