Abstract
Understanding the role of self-generated movements in perceptual learning is central to action-based theories of perception. Pioneering work on sensory adaptation by Richard M. Held during the 1950s and 1960s can still shed light on this question. In a variety of rich experiments Held and his team demonstrated the need for self-generated movements in sensory adaptation and perceptual learning. This body of work received different critical interpretations, was then forgotten for some time, and saw a surge of revived interest within embodied cognitive science. Through a brief review of Held’s work and reactions to it, we seek to contribute to discussions on the role of activity and passivity in perceptual learning. We classify different positions according to whether this role is considered to be contextual (facilitatory, but not necessary), enabling (causally necessary), or constitutive (an inextricable part of the learning process itself). We also offer a critique of the notions of activity and passivity and how they are operationalized in experimental studies. The active-passive distinction is not a binary but involves a series of dimensions and relative degrees that can make it difficult to interpret and replicate experimental results. We introduce three of these dimensions drawing on work on the sense of agency: action initiation, control, and monitoring. These refinements in terms of causal relations and dimensions of activity-passivity should help illuminate open questions concerning the role of activity in perception and perceptual learning and clarify the convergences and differences between enaction and ecological psychology.
Highlights
Action-based accounts of perception maintain that there are functional and conceptual links between action and perception (e.g., O’Regan and Noë, 2001; Noë, 2004; Pulvermüller and Fadiga, 2010)
We suggest that what is typically taken as a binary distinction is a spectrum of possibilities with various degrees and different dimensions of activity and passivity
Why do we find different positions within the ecological perspective in relation to Held’s proposal? We believe that this is because theories of perceptual learning (Gibson, 1969; Gibson and Pick, 2000; Jacobs and Michaels, 2007) make use of a concept of agency that is not emphasized in more orthodox ecological positions
Summary
Action-based accounts of perception maintain that there are functional and conceptual links between action and perception (e.g., O’Regan and Noë, 2001; Noë, 2004; Pulvermüller and Fadiga, 2010). These follow-up studies support and refine Held’s proposal concerning the enabling role of active movements in perceptual learning, showing that the control of visually guided behavior can be acquired independently for each eye and that an unsystematic correlation between self-movement and visual stimulation produces disruptive effects. Wexler (2003) studied the perception of ambiguous optic flows under voluntary (self-produced head movement), involuntary (movement controlled by an experimenter), and mismatch displacement conditions (the participant moves a wheelchair with her hands) These conditions help disentangle motor signals for action initiation (assumed to be available only in voluntary motion) and proprioceptive and vestibular information. As with other ideas in these discussions, this distinction is anything but simple
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