The cognitive representation of action: Automatic integration of perceived action effects

Actions have been assumed to be cognitively represented by codes of relevant action features. Six experiments investigated whether irrelevant action features — conditioned response-contingent auditory events — are also coded and integrated into action codes. Subjects responded to visual stimuli by pressing a left- versus right-hand button or by touching a single key once versus twice. Responses produced certain action effects: tones on the left versus the right or tones of low versus high pitch. After subjects had some practice, an inducing stimulus was presented together with the reaction stimulus; this inducing stimulus shared features with the action effect of the correct or incorrect response. If action effects were integrated into action codes, inducing stimuli should activate or prime the associated response. Indeed, substantial effects of correspondence or compatibility between inducing stimuli and irrelevant action effects were found in a variety of tasks. Results are interpreted as evidence for an automatic integration of information about action effects and taken as support of an action-concept model of action-effect integration and stimulus-response compatibility.     

S-R compatibility effects due to context-dependent spatial stimulus coding

Responses are faster with spatial S-R correspondence than with noncorrespondence (spatial compatibility effect), even if stimulus location is irrelevant (Simon effect). In two experiments, we sought to determine whether stimuli located above and below a fixation point are coded as left and right (and thus affect the selection of left and right responses) if the visual context suggests such a coding. So, stimuli appeared on the left or right eye of a face’s image that was tilted by 90° to one side or the other (Experiment 1) or varied between upright and 45° or 90° tilting (Experiment 2). Whether stimulus location was relevant (Experiment 1) or not (Experiment 2), responses were faster with correspondence of (face-based) stimulus location and (egocentrically defined) response location, even if stimulus and response locations varied on physically orthogonal dimensions. This suggests that object-based spatial stimulus codes are formed automatically and thus influence the speed of response selection.     

The relationship between stimulus processing and response selection in the Simon task: Evidence for a temporal overlap

Summary As is indicated by the Simon effect, choice reactions can be carried out faster when the response corresponds spatially to the stimulus, even if the stimulus location is irrelevant to the task. In Experiments 1–4 the relationships between the Simon effect and stimulus eccentricity, signal quality, and signal-background contrast are investigated. The Simon effect was found to interact with all of these factors, at least when manipulated blockwise. These results are at odds with previous results and are difficult to interpret from an additive-factor-method view. An alternative interpretation is suggested that attributes the results to the temporal relationship between the processing of the relevant stimulus information and stimulus location. The assumption is that a decrease in the Simon effect is caused by every experimental manipulation that markedly increases the temporal distance between the coding of the relevant stimulus information and that of the irrelevant stimulus location. This assumption was tested in Experiment 5 in a more direct way. The stimuli were built up on a screen over time, so that the temporal distance between the presence of location and identity information could be controlled experimentally. The results provide further support for a temporal-delay interpretation of interactions between irrelevant stimulus-response correspondence and factors that affect early stages of information processing.     

The costs and benefits of cross-task priming

Two lines of research on cross-task priming yield opposite results. Research on repetition priming observed positive priming, whereas research on the role of priming in task-switching observed negative effects. We combined the two types of design. In the transfer phase of our paradigm, subjects performed task B either as a pure block (BBB) or as a switch block (ABAB). We presented items which were either unprimed or primed by prior presentation during a preceding priming phase performed on task A. Amongst others, the priming effect is determined by two factors: First, the more operation time the system needs during the probe event, the higher the likelihood to obtain priming. Protracting operation time by reducing stimulus quality favors positive priming, whereas providing more operation time by making subjects switch between tasks favors negative priming. Second, the strength of the memory trace of the prime event determines whether that trace can possibly yield negative priming, in that only strong traces can be retrieved together with the associated task/response.     

Feature integration across perception and action: event files affect response choice

Five experiments investigated the spontaneous integration of stimulus and response features. Participants performed simple, prepared responses (R1) to the mere presence of Go signals (S1) before carrying out another, freely chosen response (R2) to another stimulus (S2), the main question being whether the likelihood of repeating a response depends on whether or not the stimulus, or some of its features, are repeated. Indeed, participants were more likely to repeat the previous response if stimulus form or color was repeated than if it was alternated. The same was true for stimulus location, but only if location was made task-relevant, whether by defining the response set in terms of location, by requiring the report of S2 location, or by having S1 to be selected against a distractor. These findings suggest that task-relevant stimulus and response features are spontaneously integrated into independent, local event files, each linking one stimulus to one response feature. Upon reactivation of one member of the binary link activation is spread to the other, thereby increasing the likelihood to repeat a response if one or more stimulus features are repeated. These findings support the idea that both perceptual events and action plans are cognitively represented in terms of their features, and that feature-integration processes cross borders between perception and action.     

Modes of executive control in sequence learning: from stimulus-based to plan-based control

The authors argue that human sequential learning is often but not always characterized by a shift from stimulus- to plan-based action control. To diagnose this shift, they manipulated the frequency of 1st-order transitions in a repeated manual left-right sequence, assuming that performance is sensitive to frequency-induced biases under stimulus- but not plan-based control. Indeed, frequency biases tended to disappear with practice, but only for explicit learners. This tendency was facilitated by visual-verbal target stimuli, response-contingent sounds, and intentional instructions and hampered by auditory (but not visual) noise. Findings are interpreted within an event-coding model of action control, which holds that plans for sequences of discrete actions are coded phonetically, integrating order and relative timing. The model distinguishes between plan acquisition, linked to explicit knowledge, and plan execution, linked to the action control mode.     

Working memory and the attentional blink: Blink size is predicted by individual differences in operation span

The attentional blink (AB) is often attributed to resource limitations, but the nature of these resources is commonly underspecified. Recent observations rule out access to short-term memory or storage capacity as limiting factors, but operation bottlenecks are still an option. We considered the operation span of working memory (WM) as a possible factor and investigated the relationship between individual WM operation span (as measured by OSPAN), fluid intelligence (as measures by Raven’s SPM), and the size of the AB. WM operation span was negatively correlated with the AB, whereas fluid intelligence was associated with higher overall accuracy but not with AB magnitude. These results support the idea that individual processing limitations (with regard to either attentional allocation policies or the speed of global cortical integration processes) play a key role in the AB.     

The microgenesis of action-effect binding

Ideomotor theories of human action control assume that performing a movement leads to the automatic integration of the underlying motor pattern with codes of its perceptual consequences. We studied the microgenesis of action-effect integration by varying the mapping of action effects upon actions from trial to trial. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that perceiving a tone repetition systematically affects one’s tendency to carry out the response that produced that tone in the previous trial, suggesting that even the unintentional production of a stimulus creates a temporary binding of that stimulus with the action that brought it about. Experiments 3 and 4 extended this finding in suggesting that the integration and/or retrieval of action effects is modulated by attentional factors: Ongoing performance is more impacted by action effects if they are salient or match the current attentional set.

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Action control according to TEC (theory of event coding)

The theory of event coding (TEC) is a general framework explaining how perceived and produced events (stimuli and responses) are cognitively represented and how their representations interact to generate perception and action. This article discusses the implications of TEC for understanding the control of voluntary action and makes an attempt to apply, specify, and concretize the basic theoretical ideas in the light of the available research on action control. In particular, it is argued that the major control operations may take place long before a stimulus is encountered (the prepared-reflex principle), that stimulus-response translation may be more automatic than commonly thought, that action selection and execution are more interwoven than most approaches allow, and that the acquisition of action-contingent events (action effects) is likely to subserve both the selection and the evaluation of actions.

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