Flexible weighting of body-related effects in action production

A previous study on ideomotor action control showed that predictable action effects in the agent’s environment influenced how an action is carried out. If participants were required to perform a forceful keypress, they exerted more force when these actions would produce a quiet compared to a loud tone, and this observation suggests that anticipated proprioceptive and auditory action effects are integrated with each other during action planning and control. In light of the typically weak influence of body-related effect found in recent work, we aimed to extend this pattern of results to the intra-modal case of integrating proprioceptive/tactile feedback of a movement and following vibro-tactile effects. Our results suggest that the same weighted integration process as for the cross-modal case applies to the intra-modal case. These observations support the idea of a common mechanism which binds all action-related features in an integrated action representation, irrespective of whether these features relate to exafferent or reafferent signals.

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The evolution of the capacity for language: the ecological context and adaptive value of a process of cognitive hijacking

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences ◽

10.1098/rstb.2017.0052 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 373 (1743) ◽

pp. 20170052 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Oren Kolodny ◽

Shimon Edelman

Keyword(s):

Gene Networks ◽

Language Evolution ◽

Action Planning ◽

Interdisciplinary Studies ◽

Ecological Context ◽

Cognitive Mechanisms ◽

Planning And Control ◽

Adaptive Value ◽

Short Period ◽

And Control

Language plays a pivotal role in the evolution of human culture, yet the evolution of the capacity for language—uniquely within the hominin lineage—remains little understood. Bringing together insights from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, archaeology and behavioural ecology, we hypothesize that this singular occurrence was triggered by exaptation, or ‘hijacking’, of existing cognitive mechanisms related to sequential processing and motor execution. Observed coupling of the communication system with circuits related to complex action planning and control supports this proposition, but the prehistoric ecological contexts in which this coupling may have occurred and its adaptive value remain elusive. Evolutionary reasoning rules out most existing hypotheses regarding the ecological context of language evolution, which focus on ultimate explanations and ignore proximate mechanisms. Coupling of communication and motor systems, although possible in a short period on evolutionary timescales, required a multi-stepped adaptive process, involving multiple genes and gene networks. We suggest that the behavioural context that exerted the selective pressure to drive these sequential adaptations had to be one in which each of the systems undergoing coupling was independently necessary or highly beneficial, as well as frequent and recurring over evolutionary time. One such context could have been the teaching of tool production or tool use. In the present study, we propose the Cognitive Coupling hypothesis, which brings together these insights and outlines a unifying theory for the evolution of the capacity for language. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Bridging cultural gaps: interdisciplinary studies in human cultural evolution’.

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Cognitive Foundations of Action Planning and Control

Action Science ◽

10.7551/mitpress/9780262018555.003.0004 ◽

2013 ◽

pp. 88-111

Author(s):

David A. Rosenbaum

Keyword(s):

Action Planning ◽

Planning And Control ◽

Cognitive Foundations ◽

And Control

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Scale errors by very young children: A dissociation between action planning and control

Behavioral and Brain Sciences ◽

10.1017/s0140525x04290021 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 27 (01) ◽

Author(s):

Judy S. DeLoache

Keyword(s):

Young Children ◽

Action Planning ◽

Planning And Control ◽

Very Young Children ◽

And Control

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Integration of task scheduling, action planning, and control in robotic manufacturing systems

Proceedings of the IEEE ◽

10.1109/5.871311 ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 88 (7) ◽

pp. 1097-1107 ◽

Cited By ~ 38

Author(s):

M. Song ◽

T.-J. Tarn ◽

N. Xi

Keyword(s):

Task Scheduling ◽

Manufacturing Systems ◽

Action Planning ◽

Planning And Control ◽

And Control

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Robots, softbots, immobots: The 1997 AAAI Workshop on Theories of Action, Planning and Control

The Knowledge Engineering Review ◽

10.1017/s0269888998001052 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 13 (2) ◽

pp. 179-184 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

ROBERT P. GOLDMAN ◽

CHITTA BARAL

Keyword(s):

Autonomous Agents ◽

Action Planning ◽

Planning Systems ◽

Planning Techniques ◽

The Past ◽

Execution Monitoring ◽

Planning And Control ◽

The World ◽

Theories Of Action ◽

And Control

This workshop brought together researchers concerned with fundamental issues of modelling action, those developing automated planning techniques and those attempting to implement autonomous agents acting in the world. In the past, these research communities have been separate from each other to a surprising extent. Researchers interested in theories of action have busied themselves with finding solutions to the frame and ramification problems, for very expressive theories of action. On the other hand, researchers interested in developing planning systems have typically concentrated on efficiency over expressiveness and assumed away the frame and ramification problems by means of the “STRIPS assumption”. Finally, researchers interested in implementing autonomous agents have found their attention occupied by issues of execution monitoring and sensing.

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Twin Peaks: An ERP Study of Action Planning and Control in Coacting Individuals

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn.2006.18.5.859 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 18 (5) ◽

pp. 859-870 ◽

Cited By ~ 113

Author(s):

Natalie Sebanz ◽

Günther Knoblich ◽

Wolfgang Prinz ◽

Edmund Wascher

Keyword(s):

Reaction Times ◽

Action Planning ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

P300 Amplitude ◽

Group Setting ◽

Electrophysiological Response ◽

Planning And Control ◽

Twin Peaks ◽

Related Potentials ◽

And Control

Previous studies have shown that perceiving another's actions activates corresponding representations in an observer's action system. The present study investigated how performing a task with another person affects action planning and control. Reaction times (RTs) and event-related potentials were measured while participants performed a go/no-go task alone and with another person. Three effects of acting together were observed. First, RTs were slowed when individuals had to respond to a stimulus referring to the other's action, suggesting that an action selection conflict occurred. Second, at frontal sites, a stimulus referring to the other's action elicited a similar electrophysiological response as a stimulus referring to one's own action. Finally, on no-go trials, P300 amplitude was significantly larger in a group setting, indicating that an action was suppressed. These findings provide evidence that individuals acting in a social context form shared action representations.

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Action planning and control under uncertainty emerge through a desirability-driven competition between parallel encoding motor plans

PLoS Computational Biology ◽

10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009429 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 17 (10) ◽

pp. e1009429

Author(s):

Vince Enachescu ◽

Paul Schrater ◽

Stefan Schaal ◽

Vassilios Christopoulos

Keyword(s):

Reaction Time ◽

Target Location ◽

Reaction Times ◽

Action Planning ◽

Movement Initiation ◽

Planning And Control ◽

Control Under Uncertainty ◽

And Control ◽

Target Locations ◽

The Brain

Living in an uncertain world, nearly all of our decisions are made with some degree of uncertainty about the consequences of actions selected. Although a significant progress has been made in understanding how the sensorimotor system incorporates uncertainty into the decision-making process, the preponderance of studies focus on tasks in which selection and action are two separate processes. First people select among alternative options and then initiate an action to implement the choice. However, we often make decisions during ongoing actions in which the value and availability of the alternatives can change with time and previous actions. The current study aims to decipher how the brain deals with uncertainty in decisions that evolve while acting. To address this question, we trained individuals to perform rapid reaching movements towards two potential targets, where the true target location was revealed only after the movement initiation. We found that reaction time and initial approach direction are correlated, where initial movements towards intermediate locations have longer reaction times than movements that aim directly to the target locations. Interestingly, the association between reaction time and approach direction was independent of the target probability. By modeling the task within a recently proposed neurodynamical framework, we showed that action planning and control under uncertainty emerge through a desirability-driven competition between motor plans that are encoded in parallel.

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