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A hallmark of human social behavior is the effortless ability to relate one’s own actions to that of the interaction partner, e.g., when stretching out one’s arms to catch a tripping child. What are the behavioral properties of the neural substrates that support this indispensable human skill? Here we examined the processes underlying the ability to relate actions to each other, namely the recognition of spatiotemporal contingencies between actions (e.g., a “giving” that is followed by a “taking”). We used a behavioral adaptation paradigm to examine the response properties of perceptual mechanisms at a behavioral level. In contrast to the common view that action-sensitive units are primarily selective for one action (i.e., primary action, e.g., ‘throwing”), we demonstrate that these processes also exhibit sensitivity to a matching contingent action (e.g., “catching”). Control experiments demonstrate that the sensitivity of action …