How are skills in action perception and action production interrelated?







How the things we perceive are related to the things we do.



We can observe many things, but not all of them can be carried out. We can watch a carpenter without being able to plane ourselves. But after we have had the plane in our hands and worked a few boards ourselves, we see the world with
different eyes. Embodied cognition assumes a common representation of action perception and action production. This means that experiences in one skill always bring changes in the other skill.


In this research area I am investigating: Do our perceptions of things change after one has made them oneself? Are the ways of perceiving actions connected to how one performs them oneself? How does the connection develop in early
childhood and how does it change over the lifespan? Are motor impairments linked to poorer perception?



Gaze behaviour is less flexible in very young and very old participants, and greater flexibility is related to higher scores in action production across participants.


Wermelinger, Gampe, & Daum (2019)


Psychological Research



Non-continuous changes substantially affect the relation between perception and production at each measuring point and the respective direction of causality.


Gampe, Keitel, & Daum (2015)


Frontiers in Psychology



Motor competence and its age-related differences influence the interference effects between action perception and production.


Wermelinger, Gampe, & Daum (2019)


Psychological Research



The prediction of an action goal is related to the imitation in familiar actions, but not in novel actions.


Gampe, Prinz, & Daum (2016)


British Journal of Developmental Psychology



Movement duration, distance, velocity and action type influence action prediction frequency.


Daum, Gampe, Wronski, & Attig (2016)


Infant Behavior and Development



The internal simulation of actions become less precise with age making the sensorimotor system more susceptible to perturbations.


Wermelinger, Gampe, Behr, & Daum (2018)


Experimental Brain Research



Wermelinger, S., Gampe, A., & Daum, M. M. (2019). Higher levels of motor competence are associated with reduced interference in action perception across the lifespan. Psychological Research83(3), 432–444. 
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-017-0941-z

Wermelinger, S., Gampe, A., & Daum, M. M. (2019). The dynamics of the interrelation of perception and action across the life span. Psychological Research83(1), 116–131. 
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-018-1058-8

Wermelinger, S., Gampe, A., Behr, J., & Daum, M. M. (2018). Interference of action perception on action production increases across the adult life span. Experimental Brain Research236(2), 577–586. 
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-017-5157-3

Daum, M. M., Gampe, A., Wronski, C., & Attig, M. (2016). Effects of movement distance, duration, velocity, and type on action prediction in 12-month-olds. Infant Behavior and Development43, 75–84. 
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2016.03.002

Gampe, A., Prinz, W., & Daum, M. M. (2016). Measuring action understanding: Relations between goal prediction and imitation. British Journal of Developmental Psychology34(1), 53–65. 
https://doi.org/10.1111/bjdp.12125

Gampe, A., Keitel, A., & Daum, M. M. (2015). Intra-individual variability and continuity of action and perception measures in infants. Frontiers in Psychology6
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00327

Gampe, A., & Daum, M. M. (2014). Productive Verbs Facilitate Action Prediction in Toddlers. Infancy19(3), 301–325. 
https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.12047