The sound of you and me: Novices represent shared goals in joint action

People performing joint actions coordinate their individual actions with each other to achieve a shared goal. The current study investigated the mental representations that are formed when people learn a new skill as part of a joint action. In a musical transfer-of-learning paradigm, piano novices first learned to perform simple melodies in the joint action context of coordinating with an accompanist to produce musical duets. Participants then performed their previously learned actions with two types of auditory feedback: while hearing either their individual action goal (the melody) or the shared action goal (the duet). As predicted, participants made more performance errors in the individual goal condition than in the shared goal condition. Further experimental manipulations indicated that this difference was not due to different coordination requirements in the two conditions or perceptual dissimilarities between learning and test. Together, these findings indicate that people form representations of shared goals in contexts that promote minimal representations, such as when learning a new action together with another person.     

Preschool children's control of action outcomes

Naturalistic goal‐directed behaviours require the engagement and maintenance of appropriate levels of cognitive control over relatively extended intervals of time. In two experiments, we examined preschool children's abilities to maintain top‐down control throughout the course of a sequential task. Both 3‐ and 5‐year‐olds demonstrated good abilities to access goals at the lowest level of the representational hierarchy. However, only 5‐year‐olds consistently aligned their response choices with goals at superordinate levels. These findings suggest that the ability to maintain top‐down control and adjust behavioural responses according to goals at multiple levels of abstraction undergoes a marked improvement throughout the preschool period. Results are discussed in relation to current accounts of cognitive control and the monitoring of conflict in sequential action.     

Cognitive Control of Attentional Guidance by Visual and Verbal Working Memory Representations

Both visual and verbal information in working memory guide visual attention toward a memory‐matching object. We tested whether: (a) visual and verbal representations have different effects on the deployment of attention; and (b) both types of representations can be used equally in a top‐down manner. We asked participants to maintain a visual cue or a verbal cue at the beginning of each trial, and ended with a memory task to ensure that each cue was represented actively in working memory. Before the memory task, a visual search task appeared where validity was manipulated as valid, neutral, or invalid. We also manipulated the probability of valid trials (20%, 50%, and 80%), which had been told to the participants prior to the task. Consistent with earlier findings, attentional guidance by visual representations was modulated by the probability. We also found that this was true for verbal representations, and that these effects did not differ between representation types. These results suggest that both visual and verbal representations in working memory can be used strategically to control attentional guidance.     

Training self‐assessment and task‐selection skills to foster self‐regulated learning: Do trained skills transfer across domains?

Students' ability to accurately self‐assess their performance and select a suitable subsequent learning task in response is imperative for effective self‐regulated learning. Video modeling examples have proven effective for training self‐assessment and task‐selection skills, and—importantly—such training fostered self‐regulated learning outcomes. It is unclear, however, whether trained skills would transfer across domains. We investigated whether skills acquired from training with either a specific, algorithmic task‐selection rule or a more general heuristic task‐selection rule in biology would transfer to self‐regulated learning in math. A manipulation check performed after the training confirmed that both algorithmic and heuristic training improved task‐selection skills on the biology problems compared with the control condition. However, we found no evidence that students subsequently applied the acquired skills during self‐regulated learning in math. Future research should investigate how to support transfer of task‐selection skills across domains.     

Children’s scale errors are a natural consequence of learning to associate objects with actions: A computational model

Young children sometimes attempt an action on an object, which is inappropriate because of the object size—they make scale errors. Existing theories suggest that scale errors may result from immaturities in children's action planning system, which might be overpowered by increased complexity of object representations or developing teleofunctional bias. We used computational modelling to emulate children's learning to associate objects with actions and to select appropriate actions, given object shape and size. A computational Developmental Deep Model of Action and Naming (DDMAN) was built on the dual‐route theory of action selection, in which actions on objects are selected via a direct (nonsemantic or visual) route or an indirect (semantic) route. As in case of children, DDMAN produced scale errors: the number of errors was high at the beginning of training and decreased linearly but did not disappear completely. Inspection of emerging object–action associations revealed that these were coarsely organized by shape, hence leading DDMAN to initially select actions based on shape rather than size. With experience, DDMAN gradually learned to use size in addition to shape when selecting actions. Overall, our simulations demonstrate that children's scale errors are a natural consequence of learning to associate objects with actions.     

Individual differences in the acquisition of non‐linguistic audio‐visual associations in 5 year olds

Audio‐visual associative learning – at least when linguistic stimuli are employed – is known to rely on core linguistic skills such as phonological awareness. Here we ask whether this would also be the case in a task that does not manipulate linguistic information. Another question of interest is whether executive skills, often found to support learning, may play a larger role in a non‐linguistic audio‐visual associative task compared to a linguistic one. We present a new task that measures learning when having to associate non‐linguistic auditory signals with novel visual shapes. Importantly, our novel task shares with linguistic processes such as reading acquisition the need to associate sounds with arbitrary shapes. Yet, rather than phonemes or syllables, it uses novel environmental sounds – therefore limiting direct reliance on linguistic abilities. Five‐year‐old French‐speaking children (N = 76, 39 girls) were assessed individually in our novel audio‐visual associative task, as well as in a number of other cognitive tasks evaluating linguistic abilities and executive functions. We found phonological awareness and language comprehension to be related to scores in the audio‐visual associative task, while no correlation with executive functions was observed. These results underscore a key relation between foundational language competencies and audio‐visual associative learning, even in the absence of linguistic input in the associative task.     

Prediction in infants and adults: A pupillometry study

Adults use both bottom‐up sensory inputs and top‐down signals to generate predictions about future sensory inputs. Infants have also been shown to make predictions with simple stimuli and recent work has suggested top‐down processing is available early in infancy. However, it is unknown whether this indicates that top‐down prediction is an ability that is continuous across the lifespan or whether an infant's ability to predict is different from an adult's, qualitatively or quantitatively. We employed pupillometry to provide a direct comparison of prediction abilities across these disparate age groups. Pupil dilation response (PDR) was measured in 6‐month olds and adults as they completed an identical implicit learning task designed to help learn associations between sounds and pictures. We found significantly larger PDR for visual omission trials (i.e. trials that violated participants’ predictions without the presentation of new stimuli to control for bottom‐up signals) compared to visual present trials (i.e. trials that confirmed participants’ predictions) in both age groups. Furthermore, a computational learning model that is closely linked to prediction error (Rescorla‐Wagner model) demonstrated similar learning trajectories suggesting a continuity of predictive capacity and learning across the two age groups.     

The Embodied Penman: Effector‐Specific Motor–Language Integration During Handwriting

Several studies have illuminated how processing manual action verbs (MaVs) affects the programming or execution of concurrent hand movements. Here, to circumvent key confounds in extant designs, we conducted the first assessment of motor–language integration during handwriting—a task in which linguistic and motoric processes are co‐substantiated. Participants copied MaVs, non‐manual action verbs, and non‐action verbs as we collected measures of motor programming and motor execution. Programming latencies were similar across conditions, but execution was faster for MaVs than for the other categories, regardless of whether word meanings were accessed implicitly or explicitly. In line with the Hand‐Action‐Network Dynamic Language Embodiment (HANDLE) model, such findings suggest that effector‐congruent verbs can prime manual movements even during highly automatized tasks in which motoric and verbal processes are naturally intertwined. Our paradigm opens new avenues for fine‐grained explorations of embodied language processes.     

The trichotomous model and investment in learning to prepare for a sport test: A mediational analysis

Background: Contemporary views on motivation suggest that the approach‐avoidance achievement goals conceptualisation — namely the trichotomous model — can shed light on the important issue of student motivation. Aims: To test the predictive value of the trichotomous model on the investment in learning a sport task for test preparation, and to validate a model which included a set of psychological processes (i.e., state anxiety and competence valuation) which mediate the relationship between the three goals (i.e., performance‐approach, performance‐avoidance, and mastery goals) and test preparation. The study was designed to investigate the direct and mediational effects of three experimental goal conditions on the time in which pupils prepared for a sport test. Sample: French male school pupils (N = 75). Pupils were aged 13‐15 years and attended schools in southern France. Method: Pupils prepared themselves for a sport task with a 5‐minute period of training, and performed in one of three experimental conditions to which they were randomly assigned: a performance goal with a positive outcome focus (performance‐approach), a performance goal with a negative outcome focus (performance‐avoidance), or a mastery goal. Results: Pupils in the performance‐avoidance group reported higher state anxiety and lower competence valuation than those in the performance‐approach and mastery groups, and this psychological state was associated with less time taken to prepare for the test. Conclusion: School pupils placed in an examination preparation context that elicits a performance goal with a negative outcome focus (performance‐avoidance) show motivational deficits which manifest themselves in less time spent practising. The trichotomous model appears to be valid for the study of motivational processes in school physical education.     

Motor affordance and its role for visual working memory: evidence from fMRI studies

We examined the role of motor affordances of objects for working memory retention processes. Three experiments are reported in which participants passively viewed pictures of real world objects or had to retain the objects in working memory for a comparison with an S2 stimulus. Brain activation was recorded by means of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Retaining information about objects for which hand actions could easily be retrieved (manipulable objects) in working memory activated the hand region of the ventral premotor cortex (PMC) contralateral to the dominant hand. Conversely, nonmanipulable objects activated the left inferior frontal gyrus. This suggests that working memory for objects with motor affordance is based on motor programs associated with their use. An additional study revealed that motor program activation can be modulated by task demands: Holding manipulable objects in working memory for an upcoming motor comparison task was associated with left ventral PMC activation. However, retaining the same objects for a subsequent size comparison task led to activation in posterior brain regions. This suggests that the activation of hand motor programs are under top down control. By this they can flexibly be adapted to various task demands. It is argued that hand motor programs may serve a similar working memory function as speech motor programs for verbalizable working memory contents, and that the premotor system mediates the temporal integration of motor representations with other task-relevant representations in support of goal oriented behavior.     

Action representations activated by task‐irrelevant information: Is it really irrelevant?

Accessing action knowledge is believed to rely on the activation of action representations through the retrieval of functional, manipulative, and spatial information associated with objects. However, it remains unclear whether action representations can be activated in this way when the object information is irrelevant to the current judgment. The present study investigated this question by independently manipulating the correctness of three types of action‐related information: the functional relation between the two objects, the grip applied to the objects, and the orientation of the objects. In each of three tasks in Experiment 1, participants evaluated the correctness of only one of the three information types (function, grip or orientation). Similar results were achieved with all three tasks: “correct” judgments were facilitated when the other dimensions were correct; however, “incorrect” judgments were facilitated when the other two dimensions were both correct and also when they were both incorrect. In Experiment 2, when participants attended to an action‐irrelevant feature (object color), there was no interaction between function, grip, and orientation. These results clearly indicate that action representations can be activated by retrieval of functional, manipulative, and spatial knowledge about objects, even though this is task‐irrelevant information.     

The teleological stance: Past,present, and future

We review the support for, and criticisms of, the teleological stance theory, often described as a foundation for goal‐directed action understanding early in life. A major point of contention in the literature has been how teleological processes and assumptions of rationality are represented and understood in infancy, and this debate has been largely centered on three paradigms. Visual habituation studies assess infant's abilities to retrospectively assess teleological processes; the presence of such processes is supported by the literature. Rational imitation is a phenomenon that has been questioned both theoretically and empirically, and there is currently little support for this concept in the literature. The involvement of teleological processes in action prediction is unclear. To date, the ontology of teleological processes remains unspecified. To remedy this, we present a new action‐based theory of teleological processes (here referred to as the embodied account of teleological processes), based on the development of goal‐directed reaching with its origin during the fetal period and continuous development over the first few months of life.     

Action–effect learning in early childhood: does language matter?

Previous work showed that language has an important function for the development of action control. This study examined the role of verbal processes for action–effect learning in 4-year-old children. Participants performed an acquisition phase including a two-choice key-pressing task in which each key press (action) was followed by a particular sound (effect). Children were instructed to either (1) label their actions along with the corresponding effects, (2) verbalize task-irrelevant words, (3) or perform without verbalization. In a subsequent test phase, they responded to the same sound effects either under consistent or under inconsistent sound-key mappings. Evidence for action–effect learning was obtained only if action and effects were labeled or if no verbalization was performed, but not if children verbalized task-irrelevant labels. Importantly, action–effect learning was most pronounced when children verbalized the actions and the corresponding effects, suggesting that task-relevant verbal labeling supports the integration of event representations.     

Action video game experience affects oculomotor performance

Action video games have been show to affect a variety of visual and cognitive processes. There is, however, little evidence of whether playing video games can also affect motor action. To investigate the potential link between experience playing action video games and changes in oculomotor action, we tested habitual action video game players (VGPs) and non-video game players (NVGPs) in a saccadic trajectory deviation task. We demonstrate that spatial curvature of a saccadic trajectory towards or away from distractor is profoundly different between VGPs and NVGPs. In addition, task performance accuracy improved over time only in VGPs. Results are discussed in the context of the competing interplay between stimulus-driven motor programming and top–down inhibition during oculomotor execution.     

Dynamic Simulation and Static Matching for Action Prediction: Evidence From Body Part Priming

Accurately predicting other people's actions may involve two processes: internal real‐time simulation (dynamic updating) and matching recently perceived action images (static matching). Using a priming of body parts, this study aimed to differentiate the two processes. Specifically, participants played a motion‐controlled video game with either their arms or legs. They then observed arm movements of a point‐light actor, which were briefly occluded from view, followed by a static test pose. Participants judged whether this test pose depicted a coherent continuation of the previously seen action (i.e., “action prediction task”). Evidence of dynamic updating was obtained after compatible effector priming (i.e., arms), whereas incompatible effector priming (i.e., legs) indicated static matching. Together, the results support action prediction as engaging two distinct processes, dynamic simulation and static matching, and indicate that their relative contributions depend on contextual factors like compatibility of body parts involved in performed and observed action.     

Speaker variability augments phonological processing in early word learning

Infants in the early stages of word learning have difficulty learning lexical neighbors (i.e. word pairs that differ by a single phoneme), despite their ability to discriminate the same contrast in a purely auditory task. While prior work has focused on top‐down explanations for this failure (e.g. task demands, lexical competition), none has examined if bottom‐up acoustic‐phonetic factors play a role. We hypothesized that lexical neighbor learning could be improved by incorporating greater acoustic variability in the words being learned, as this may buttress still‐developing phonetic categories, and help infants identify the relevant contrastive dimension. Infants were exposed to pictures accompanied by labels spoken by either a single or multiple speakers. At test, infants in the single‐speaker condition failed to recognize the difference between the two words, while infants who heard multiple speakers discriminated between them.     

Contiguity and contingency in action-effect learning

According to the two-stage model of voluntary action, the ability to perform voluntary action is acquired in two sequential steps. Firstly, associations are acquired between representations of movements and of the effects that frequently follow them. Secondly, the anticipation or perception of an acquired action effect primes the movement that has been learnt to produce this effect; the acquired action-effect associations thus mediate the selection of actions that are most appropriate to achieve an intended action goal. If action-effect learning has an associative basis, it should be influenced by factors that are known to affect instrumental learning, such as the temporal contiguity and the probabilistic contingency of movement and effect. In two experiments, the contiguity or the contingency between key presses and subsequent tones was manipulated in various ways. As expected, both factors affected the acquisition of action-effect relations as assessed by the potency of action effects to prime the corresponding action in a later behavioral test. In particular, evidence of action-effect associations was obtained only if the effect of the action was delayed for no more than 1 s, if the effect appeared more often in the presence than in the absence of the action, or if action and effect were entirely uncorrelated but the effect appeared very often. These findings support the assumption that the control of voluntary actions is based on action-effect representations that are acquired by associative learning mechanisms.     

The interplay between executive control and motor functioning in Williams syndrome

Previous studies suggest that individuals with Williams syndrome (WS), a rare genetically based neurodevelopmental disorder, show specific weaknesses in visual attention and response inhibition within the visuospatial domain. Here we examine the extent to which impairments in attentional control extend to the visuomotor domain using a well‐validated measure of choice stepping reaction time (CSRT) in individuals with WS. We examined the interaction between executive control and visually guided stepping using a verbal fluency dual‐task or Go/NoGo paradigm during CSRT performance. Relationships between dual‐task and inhibitory stepping and behavioural inattention and hyperactivity were also examined. Our results showed clear dual‐task costs in stepping response times when performing a concurrent cognitive task in the WS group when compared to spatial and verbal ability matched typically developing controls. Although no group differences in stepping accuracy were observed between the WS and typically developing control groups, the WS group showed progressive slowing and more variable response times across the duration of the Go/NoGo task. These results suggest dysfunction in circuits involved in top‐down attentional control processes in WS. These findings provide novel evidence that core executive control deficits in WS extend to the visuomotor domain, and impact on ADHD‐related inattentive symptoms.     

Effects of group goal content on group processes,collective efficacy,and satisfaction

We examined the efficacy of groups possessing learning as opposed to performance goals on an interactive group task. As such, we predicted that the possession of learning goals focuses groups more on strategic processes than the possession of performance or do‐best goals. We further hypothesized that collective efficacy beliefs are most strongly correlated with performance for groups that possess performance goals because performance goals direct attention to task outcomes. Results indicated that groups assigned learning goals discussed more strategic information and reported greater satisfaction with performance. In addition, the relationship between task performance and collective efficacy was stronger for performance‐goal groups than learning‐goal groups. Overall, results suggested that causing groups to attend to processes required for effective group performance influences how groups regulate behavior and interpret feedback.     

Linguistic and Perceptual Mapping in Spatial Representations: An Attentional Account

Building on evidence for embodied representations, we investigated whether Spanish spatial terms map onto the NEAR/FAR perceptual division of space. Using a long horizontal display, we measured congruency effects during the processing of spatial terms presented in NEAR or FAR space. Across three experiments, we manipulated the task demands in order to investigate the role of endogenous attention in linguistic and perceptual space mapping. We predicted congruency effects only when spatial properties were relevant for the task (reaching estimation task, Experiment 1) but not when attention was allocated to other features (lexical decision, Experiment 2; and color, Experiment 3). Results showed faster responses for words presented in Near‐space in all experiments. Consistent with our hypothesis, congruency effects were observed only when a reaching estimate was requested. Our results add important evidence for the role of top‐down processing in congruency effects from embodied representations of spatial terms.