Fidgeting as self-evidencing: A predictive processing account of non-goal-directed action |
| |
Affiliation: | 1. Department of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical Center-Westchester Division, 21 Bloomingdale Road, White Plains, NY 10605, United States;2. Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University Medical Center, New York State Psychiatric Institute, 1051 Riverside Drive, Unit 98, New York, NY 10032, United States;3. Department of Psychiatry, New York University Langone Medical Center, One Park Avenue, 8-131, New York, NY 10016, United States;4. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, United States, 35487 |
| |
Abstract: | Non-goal-directed actions have been relatively neglected in cognitive science, but are ubiquitous and related to important cognitive functions. Fidgeting is seemingly one subtype of non-goal-directed action which is ripe for a functional account. What's the point of fidgeting? The predictive processing framework is a parsimonious account of brain function which says the brain aims to minimise the difference between expected and actual states of the world and itself, that is, minimise prediction error. This framework situates action selection in terms of active inference for expected states. However, seemingly aimless, idle actions, such as fidgeting, are a challenge to such theories. When our actions are not obviously goal-achieving, how can a predictive processing framework explain why we regularly do them anyway? Here, we argue that in a predictive processing framework, evidence for the agent's own existence is consolidated by self-stimulation or fidgeting. Endogenous, repetitive actions reduce uncertainty about the system's own states, and thus help continuously maintain expected rates of prediction error minimisation. We extend this explanation to clinically distinctive self-stimulation, such as in Autism Spectrum Conditions, in which effective strategies for self-evidencing may be different to the neurotypical case. |
| |
Keywords: | Fidgeting Self-evidencing Non-goal-directed action Prediction error minimisation Autism spectrum conditions |
本文献已被 ScienceDirect 等数据库收录! |
|