Moreover, even in cases in which associative learning is likely to play a role, there is no reason to assume that it should be the only or the most important process at work. In most instances in which we produce or observe actions (or both), there are a myriad possible associations that could be made. It is therefore important to consider how these possibilities could be constrained. For example, one possible way is to identify the goals that specific actors are likely to be pursuing in specific situations, and the means that are most efficacious in bringing about those goals. By ignoring such factors, a strict associationist account is forced to endorse the prediction that stronger visuomotor associations correlate in a linear fashion with stronger mirror-like effects. However, the strength of the latter seems instead to be linked to the relevance of a given effector (i.e. hands, face) for social interaction. In fact, such social-relevance weighting maps nicely to the motor and somatosensory homunculus geometry, with hands and face being represented most prominently. The ‘body distortions’ observed in the homunculus are based on the density of sensory receptors as well as on our capacity for fine motor control of that body part. In brief, those body parts are critical in all our (social and non-social) activities, and this might be the metric upon which mirror-like activities are built – not pure visuomotor association.