ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the articulation of emotion and executive function in a simulation theory approach of how mental agents understand each other's intentions, emotions and beliefs. It introduces a particular way of drawing the distinction between the use of theory and simulation in the prediction of people's decisions and describes an empirical method to test whether theory or simulation is used in a particular case. Simulation theories believe that the perception of other people's behavior is supported and sub-served by some kind of simulation of that behavior. Simulation exploits the motor system's inbuilt anticipatory capacities for predicting the future course of perceptual events. The chapter argues that the lateral premotor cortex serves as a dynamic feed-forward model that tunes action to perception and vice versa. It also discusses identification of actions made by others using computational models of sensory-motor behavior.
