Shared Representations in Athletes: Segmenting Action Sequences From Taekwondo Reveals Implicit Agreement

How do athletes represent actions from their sport? How are these representations structured and which knowledge is shared among experts in the same discipline? To address these questions, the event segmentation task was used. Experts in Taekwondo and novices indicated how they would subjectively split videos of Taekwondo form sequences into meaningful units. In previous research, this procedure was shown to unveil the structure of internal action representations and to be affected by sensorimotor knowledge. Without specific instructions on the grain size of segmentation, experts tended to integrate over longer episodes which resulted in a lower number of single units. Moreover, in accordance with studies in figure-skating and basketball, we expected higher agreement among experts on where to place segmentation marks, i.e., boundaries. In line with this hypothesis, significantly more overlap of boundaries was found within the expert group as compared to the control group. This was observed even though the interindividual differences in the selected grain size were huge and expertise had no systematic influence here. The absence of obvious goals or objects to structure Taekwondo forms underlines the importance of shared expert knowledge. Further, experts might have benefited from sensorimotor skills which allowed to simulate the observed actions more precisely. Both aspects may explain stronger agreement among experts even in unfamiliar Taekwondo forms. These interpretations are descriptively supported by the participants’ statements about features which guided segmentation and by an overlap of the group’s agreed boundaries with those of an experienced referee. The study shows that action segmentation can be used to provide insights into structure and content of action representations specific to experts. The mechanisms underlying shared knowledge among Taekwondoists and among experts in general are discussed on the background of current theoretic frameworks.

Category-specific representational patterns in left inferior frontal and temporal cortex reflect similarities and differences in the sensorimotor and distributional properties of concepts

Neuronal populations code similar concepts by similar activity patterns across the human brain’s networks supporting language comprehension. However, it is unclear to what extent such meaning-to-symbol mapping reflects statistical distributions of symbol meanings in language use, as quantified by word co-occurrence frequencies, or, rather, experiential information thought to be necessary for grounding symbols in sensorimotor knowledge. Here we asked whether integrating distributional semantics with human judgments of grounded sensorimotor semantics better approximates the representational similarity of conceptual categories in the brain, as compared with each of these methods used separately. We examined the similarity structure of activation patterns elicited by action- and object-related concepts using multivariate representational similarity analysis (RSA) of fMRI data. The results suggested that a semantic vector integrating both sensorimotor and distributional information yields best category discrimination on the cognitive-linguistic level, and explains the corresponding activation patterns in left posterior inferior temporal cortex. In turn, semantic vectors based on detailed visual and motor information uncovered category-specific similarity patterns in fusiform and angular gyrus for object-related concepts, and in motor cortex, left inferior frontal cortex (BA 44), and supramarginal gyrus for action-related concepts.

The visual encoding of graspable unfamiliar objects

We explored by eye-tracking the visual encoding modalities of participants (N = 20) involved in a free-observation task in which three repetitions of ten unfamiliar graspable objects were administered. Then, we analysed the temporal allocation (t = 1500ms) of visual-spatial attention to objects’ manipulation (i.e., the part aimed at grasping the object) and functional (i.e., the part aimed at recognizing the function and identity of the object) areas. We found a reversed quadratic trend in the way participants visually explored the objects. Within the first 750ms, participants tended to shift their gaze on the functional areas while decreasing their attention on the manipulation areas. Then, participants reversed this trend, decreasing their visual-spatial attention to the functional areas while relatively increasing fixations to the manipulation areas. Crucially, the global amount of visual-spatial attention for objects’ functional areas significantly decreased as an effect of stimuli repetition while remaining stable for the manipulation areas, thus indicating stimulus familiarity effects. These findings support the action reappraisal theoretical approach, which considers object processing and tool use as abilities emerging from the integration among semantic, technical/mechanical, and sensorimotor knowledge.

Sensorimotor knowledge from task-irrelevant feedback contributes to motor learning

Exposure to task-irrelevant feedback leads to perceptual learning, but its effect on motor learning has been understudied. Here we asked human participants to reach a visual target with a hand-controlled cursor while observing another cursor moving independently in a different direction. While the task-irrelevant feedback did not change the main task's performance, it elicited robust savings in subsequent adaptation to classical visuomotor rotation perturbation. We demonstrated that the saving effect resulted from a faster formation of strategic learning through a series of experiments, not from gains in the implicit learning process. Furthermore, the saving effect was robust against drastic changes in stimulus features (i.e., rotation size or direction) or task types (i.e., for motor adaptation and skill learning). However, the effect was absent when the task-irrelevant feedback did not carry the visuomotor relationship embedded in visuomotor rotation. Thus, though previous research on perceptual learning has related task-irrelevant feedback to changes in early sensory processes, our findings support its role in acquiring abstract sensorimotor knowledge during motor learning. Motor learning studies have traditionally focused on task-relevant feedback, but our study extends the scope of feedback processes and sheds new light on the dichotomy of explicit and implicit learning in motor adaptation as well as motor structure learning.

Conclusion

The conclusion considers two nonliterary performances of kinesic humor. In their respective routines about horse dressage, Jacques Tati and Eddie Izzard play with their audience’s sensorimotor knowledge and kinesic literacy. While speech is absent from Tati’s mime, it is part of Izzard’s show. In both cases, however, motor cognition operates at a pace that is faster than verbal elucidation. These two examples illustrate the ways in which we are able to cognitively process a gesture and respond to it without necessarily knowing how to account verbally for its humorous and effective complexity. The connections between sensorimotor concepts and verbal concepts cannot be taken for granted. The literary artists whose works are discussed in Kinesic Humor were able to play with such connections and communicate about the ever-surprising versatility of human embodied cognition, leading sometimes to laughter, one of the most obviously embodied of all cognitive events.

Reaching to the Self: The Development of Infants’ Ability to Localize Targets on the Body

This study focused on the development of infants’ sensorimotor knowledge about the layout of their bodies. Little is known about the development of the body as a reaching space, despite the importance of this skill for many self-directed adaptive behaviors, such as removing foreign stimuli from the skin or scratching an itch. A new method was developed in which vibrating targets were placed on the heads and arms of 7- to 21-month-old infants ( N = 78) to test reaching localization of targets. Manual localization improved with age, and visual localization was associated with successful reaching. Use of the ipsilateral or contralateral hand varied with body region: Infants primarily used the ipsilateral hand for head targets but the contralateral hand for arm targets, for which ipsilateral reaches were not biomechanically possible. The results of this research highlight a previously understudied form of self-knowledge involving a functional capacity to reach to tactile targets on the body surface.

Pouw, Wassenburg, Hostetter, de Koning, & Paas. Does Gesture Strengthen Sensorimotor Knowledge of Objects? The Case of the Size-Weight Illusion

Co-speech gestures have been proposed to strengthen sensorimotor knowledge related to objects’ weight and manipulability. In this pre-registered study (N =159) designed to provide a robust, direct, and detailed test of this proposal, participants practiced a problem-solving task with small and large objects that were designed to induce a size-weight illusion (i.e., objects weigh the same but are experienced as different in weight). Participants then explained the task with or without co-speech gesture, or completed a control task. Afterwards, participants judged the heaviness of objects from memory and then while holding them. Confirmatory analyses revealed that gesturing did not affect heaviness ratings. However, exploratory analyses revealed reliable correlations between participants’ heaviness judgments from memory and a) the amount of gestures produced that simulated actions, and b) the kinematics of the lifting phases of those gestures. These findings suggest that gestures emerge as sensorimotor imaginings that are governed by the agent’s history of sensorimotor interactions with the environment.

Behavioral Flexibility and Anticipatory Behavior

While reward-oriented learning can adapt and optimize behavior, this chapter shows how behavior can become anticipatory and selectively goal-oriented. Flexibility and adaptability are necessary when living in changing environmental niches. As a consequence, different locations in the environment need to be distinguished to enable selective and optimally attuned interactions. To accomplish this, sensorimotor learning is necessary. With sufficient sensorimotor knowledge, the progressively abstract learning of environmental predictive models becomes possible. These models enable forward anticipations about action consequences and incoming sensory information. As a consequence, our own influences on the environment can be distinguished from other influences, following the re-afference principle. Moreover, inverse anticipations enable the selection of the behavior that is believed to reach current goals most effectively. Coupled with motivations, goal-directed behavior can be generated self-motivatedly. Furthermore, curious, information seeking, epistemic behavior can be generated. The remainder of the book addresses how the brain accomplishes this goal-oriented, self-motivated generation of behavior and thought, where the latter can be considered mental behavior.

Cognitive robots in the development and rehabilitation of children with developmental disorders

Cognitive robots constitute a highly interdisciplinary approach to the issue of therapy of children with developmental disorders. Cognitive robots become more popular, especially in action and language integration areas, joining the experience of psychologists, neuroscientists, philosophers, and even engineers. The concept of a robot as a cognitive companion for humans may be very useful. The interaction between humans and cognitive robots may be a mediator of movement patterns, learning behaviors from demonstrations, group activities, and social behaviors, as far as higher-order concepts such as symbol manipulation capabilities, words acquisition, and sensorimotor knowledge organization. Moreover there is an occupation to check many theories, such as transferring the knowledge and skills between humans and robots. Although several robotic solutions for children have been proposed the diffusion of aforementioned ideas is still limited. The review summarizes the current and future role of cognitive robots in the development and rehabilitation of children with developmental disorders.