ABSTRACT
Experience acting in the world is ubiquitous, and thus we may sometimes take for granted the profound effect it has on our perception of the world around us. Consider for a moment simple everyday actions such as reaching for and grasping objects. As an infant develops the necessary skill to perform these actions, his or her ability to interpret others’ movement in a social context develops too (Woodward, 2009). Now consider a world-class athlete who spends many thousands of hours practising a set of skills (say, a jump shot in basketball or a 3-foot putt in golf). The process of accumulating a lot of specific motor experience, such as the practice needed to acquire athletic or musical expertise, can have a sizeable effect on both brain structure and function. Moreover, over time, practice changes the way our brain interprets and responds to relevant stimuli in the environment. Expert performers (e.g. athletes, musicians, dancers) represent the extreme of accumulated specific action experience and have thus been an important focus for the study of practice-related neural and cognitive changes. They are also an integral piece of the investigation into how people’s action experience carries implications beyond their own performance, altering how they perceive the world around them.
