GRIFFITHS AND TIPPER pseudoneglect (Bowers & Heilman, 1980; for a review see Jewell & McCourt, 2000) when bisecting a line. In near space this bias is towards the left, shifting rightward when bisecting lines in far space. This contrast between near and far represen- tations of space has now been extended to action observation. When a motor act is observed, the same motor processes are activated in the observer (e.g., Binkofski et al., 1999; DiPellegrino, Fadiga, Fogassi, Gallese, & Rizzolatti 1992), and such action simulation might be a means by which we can understand and predict the actions of other people. A typical everyday action could consist of a reach over an obstacle to grasp a target object, as when during dinner a wine glass is in the reach path to the desired salt. Our recent work has demonstrated that when a person is observed reach- ing over an obstacle to grasp a target, a participant’s subsequent reach is more curved even when there is no obstacle present. Thus viewing the curved obstacle avoiding reach activates similar motor pro- cesses in the observer, and these inﬂuence sub- sequent actions. However, of central importance, this obstacle avoidance priming effect is only detected if the observed reach and obstacle is within the near (peripersonal) action space of the observer. In sharp contrast, if the observed action is only slightly outside the near action space of the observer, the action simulation processes are not activated (e.g., Grifﬁths & Tipper, 2009).1 Therefore the simulation of how another person reaches through space is only activated when that action is relevant to the observer, because the avoided object is a potential obstacle for the obser- ver. However, a key question remains concerning this “hand centred” action priming effect. Is the effect invariant in the sense that reach path priming can only ever be obtained when the observed reach is within near (peripersonal) action space? Or is it the case that the action simulation processes can be activated when an object is a poten- tial obstacle for a participant, even when a viewed action is in far space beyond the range of action? To test these alternative accounts, we devised two experimental situations. In both conditions, observed obstacle avoidance was 120 cm from the viewer’s hand and hence was well outside near action space. In the “separate-workspace” condition (Experiment 1), participants reached for their own objects in their own work environment and observed the actions of another person within a separate work environment (see Figure 1, Panel A). In this situ- ation, we predicted no priming of reach trajectory when observing actions in far space. The “shared- workspace” condition (Experiment 2) was identical except that, after reaching for an object, the exper- imenter moved the work environment and objects to the other participant. This procedure is rep- resented in Figure 1, Panel B. Of note, the produced and observed reaching actions were identical in the separate- and shared-workspace conditions; only the events intervening between trials differed. EXPERIMENT 1: SEPARATE- WORKSPACE CONDITION Method Participants A total of 16 right-handed students (13 female), with a mean age of 20.7 years, participated in this 1 It is important to note that the important role of observing actions within peripersonal space has been speciﬁcally observed in reach trajectory priming effects—that is, the path the hand takes to reach a target object (Grifﬁths & Tipper, 2009). However, the majority of studies of mirror systems and priming via action observation have examined action goal priming. This represents the goal to be achieved rather than the speciﬁc motor properties of the action. For example, some parietal cells discriminate between iden- tical reach and grasp actions based on the subsequent goal of either eating or placing the grasped object (Fogassi et al., 2005). Such goals can be primed in an observer even when only heard (Kohler et al., 2002), or produced behind an occluder (Umiltà et al., 2001), or when the goal is achieved by different effectors (hand or foot: e.g., Constantini, Committeri, & Galati, 2008). In these action goal priming procedures, the issue of whether actions are observed within near peripersonal or far extrapersonal space has rarely been engaged. As many action goal priming effects can be detected even when the observed action is presented on a computer screen where objects cannot be acted upon (e.g., Tipper & Bach, 2008), we feel such goal-based effects are not so inﬂuenced by the ability to act on objects and the distance from the observer’s body. 1242 THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, 2012, 65 (7)