it must be emphasized that the associationist account is compatible with the possibility that neural circuits with both motor and perceptual properties, though shaped by a domain-general learning process, may nevertheless take on domain-specific functions, such as the function of contributing to action understanding. Thus, an account of the origins of the MNS does not by any means save us the trouble of carrying out targeted research to address the separate issue of function. Next, it must also be emphasized that while the associationist account may provide at least part of an account of the origins of the MNS, there is no reason whatsoever to expect that it is incompatible with other, more domain-specific, factors also playing a role in the learning process. On the contrary, a fruitful way to make use of the insights generated by the associationist approach would be to attempt to pinpoint limitations of associationist learning, and to articulate and test hypotheses about processes that may subserve functions for which associationist learning is not sufficient. For example, the associationist account is not well-suited to explaining instances in which agents are able to use their own motor capacities in identifying other agents’ goals in the absence of associative links between those motor capacities and visual information about the effects of those movements. Thus, D’Ausilio et al. (2014) were able to induce a version of the McGurk effect without participants actually seeing the face of a speaker but, instead, a visual representation of the speaker’s tongue. Given that the participants had presumably not had the occasion to observe their own or others’ tongues while producing the relevant sounds, it is highly implausible to appeal to associative learning in explaining this finding. Instead, it is much more likely that the participants’ perception was biased by their specific motor knowledge about how they move their tongue when producing speech.