Abstract
This study examined event-related potentials (ERPs) during evaluating the appropriateness of cooperative actions performed by two persons. The sets of two photos were used in which one person passed an object in the first photo and another person received it in the second photo. Participants made judgments for receive-actions whether the sets of the photos were appropriate or inappropriate. Viewing inappropriate actions elicited larger ERP negativities than viewing appropriate actions in the following two time periods. The first negativies (300-500 ms) were largest in the parietal area, while the second negativities (700-900 ms) were largest in the frontal area. It is known that N400s and N700s tend to be elicited in response to semantic priming and to mental imageries, respectively. Thus, the first negativies may reflect the priming process of appropriate receive-actions induced by viewing pass-actions. The second negativies can be considered to reflect the mental modification of inappropriate action images.
