Abstract
Increasing evidence suggests that perception and action planning do not represent separable stages of a unidirectional processing sequence, but rather emerging properties of highly interactive processes. To capture these characteristics of the human cognitive system, we have developed a connectionist model of the interaction between perception and action planning: HiTEC, based on the Theory of Event Coding (Hommel et al. in Behav Brain Sci 24:849–937, 2001). The model is characterized by representations at multiple levels and by shared representations and processes. It complements available models of stimulus–response translation by providing a rationale for (1) how situation-specific meanings of motor actions emerge, (2) how and why some aspects of stimulus–response translation occur automatically and (3) how task demands modulate sensorimotor processing. The model is demonstrated to provide a unitary account and simulation of a number of key findings with multiple experimental paradigms on the interaction between perception and action such as the Simon effect, its inversion (Hommel in Psychol Res 55:270–279, 1993), and action–effect learning.
Highlights
Coordinating our actions in response to environmental demands is an important cognitive activity
It is generally hypothesized that the task context triggers the implementation of a task set (Monsell, 1996) that focuses the cognitive system on relevant perceptual events and appropriate actions
Representations at higher levels modulate representations at lower levels. This allows both for direct interaction between perception and action representations and modulation by the task context
Summary
Coordinating our actions in response to environmental demands is an important cognitive activity. In HiTEC, following TEC, connections between feature codes and motor codes are not fixed but learned according to the ideomotor principle (Hommel, 2009; James, 1890; Lotze, 1852; Stock & Stock, 2004) This principle states that when one executes a particular action and perceives the resulting effects in the environment, the active motor pattern is automatically associated to the perceptual input representing the action’s effect. Note that feature codes ‘Key’ and ‘Sound’ are omitted from both figures for the sake of clarity (2001) the model instance in the non-reversal condition reached the response threshold (29.3 cycles on average) faster than the instance in the reversal condition (38.5 cycles on average) This simulation demonstrates how HiTECs representations and basic processing principles readily give rise to the observed empirical results demonstrated by Elsner and Hommel (2001). This simulation demonstrates that the basic principles of HiTEC allow a task to be implemented in a way that stimuli and responses are encoded flexibly and even ‘automatic’ aspects of stimulus–response translation can be modulated by the task
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