The Simon effect as tool and heuristic

On its 43rd anniversary the Simon effect can look back at a long and varied history. First treated as a curious observation with implications for human factors research, it slowly evolved not only into a valuable target of psychological theorizing itself but also into a handy means to investigate attentional operations, the representation of space and of one's body, the cognitive representation of intentional action, and executive control. This article discusses the major characteristics of the Simon effect and the Simon task that laid the ground for this success and reviews the major lines of research, theoretical developments, and ongoing controversies on and around the Simon Effect and the cognitive processes it reflects.     

Modern views on motor skill learning are not ‘representative’!

Approaches to the explanation of (motor) behaviour deriving from basic Cybernetic principles are contrasted with that based on Skinner's principle of operant conditioning. The reliance of the former on systems of representation (comparators, transducers, schemas etc.), not open to observation, is shown to give rise to a number of theoretical and applied problems. While Skinner's approach is shown to avoid such assumptions it is, in turn, limited in the explanations it provides for behavioural change by its undue emphasis on why things are done at the expense of how they are done. It is argued that recent developments in Ecological Psychology, particularly dynamical systems approaches, provide novel solutions to the question of how things are done but, in so doing, lose track of the why. In spite of the limitations of either perspective on its own, there does seem to be sufficient (fundamental) communality and complementarity to provide the basis for a rapprochement that can lead to a better understanding of behaviour in general and motor behaviour in particular.     

Towards the naturalization of agency based on an interactivist account of autonomy

This paper attempts to provide the basis for a broader naturalized account of agency. Naturalization is considered as the need for an ongoing and open-ended process of scientific inquiry driven by the continuous formulation of questions regarding a phenomenon. The naturalization of agency is focused around the interrelation of the fundamental notions of autonomy, functionality, intentionality and meaning. Certain naturalized frameworks of agency are critically considered in an attempt to bring together all the characteristic properties that constitute an autonomous agent, as well as to indicate the shaping of these notions/properties during the development and the evolution of its agential capacity. Autonomy and interaction are proved to be key concepts in this endeavor.