Active Perception and Perceiving Action: The Shared Circuits Model

Abstract Recently, research on imitation and its role in social cognition has been flourishing across various disciplines. After briefly reviewing these developments under the heads of behaviour, subpersonal mechanisms, and functions of imitation, a shared circuits model is advanced. This model of subpersonal functional architecture describes a unified framework, relating control, imitation, and simulation. A striking aspect of the model is the way it connects a shared information space for action and perception with a shared information space for self and other, while at the same time illustrating how the distinctions between self and other, and between the possible and actual, can be overlaid on these shared information spaces. It views perception and action as dynamically co-constituted and shows how cognitively significant resources, such as distinctions between self and other and between possible and actual actions, and information for action understanding and planning, might emerge from the information space that action and perception share.