Anticipation Of Action Effects Research Articles

Electrophysiological evidence for action-effect prediction.

A central function of the human brain is prediction. Influential theoretical views suggest that we form predictions about forthcoming sensory outcomes that follow from our own actions and that anticipation of these outcomes is fundamental for action control. However, little is known about how predicted outcomes are represented at the neural level. We hypothesized that neural activity reflecting the anticipation of outcomes should precede action initiation. Following computational theories on action control, anticipation should be reflected in an outcome-selective reduction in neural activity. To test this, the present study recorded scalp electroencephalography to show that brain activity reflects action-effect specific representations before response initiation. We harnessed frequency entrainment to tag neural activity specific for particular action-effects. Participants engendered visual action-effects that were presented in flickering frequencies of 6 or 10 Hz, either according to a fixed cue-response mapping (Experiment 1) or freely chosen (Experiment 2). Results showed that perception of action-effects entrained a steady-state visual brain response specific to the perceived action-effect at either 6 or 10 Hz. More important, neural pattern reflecting action-effect specific representations emerged even before a response was given (i.e., without any visual stimulation). In line with theoretical accounts, perception of action-effects led to a specific increase in neural activity, while prediction of action-effects led to a specific decrease in neural activity. These findings provide neural evidence for the anticipation of action-effects before response initiation, supporting major theories of action control. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Action-effect anticipation and temporal adaptation in social interactions.

Interacting agents may anticipate their partner's upcoming response and include it in their action plan. In turn, observing an overt response can trigger agents to adapt. But although anticipation and adaptation are known to shape action control, their interplay in social interactions remains largely unexplored. In 4 experiments, we asked how both of these mechanisms could contribute to one striking phenomenon: Agents initiate actions faster when they know their partner will produce a compatible rather than an incompatible response. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the compatibility between agents' actions and partners' responses and investigated the interplay between adaptation and anticipation within the same dyadic interaction. In Experiments 2-4, we isolated the contribution of each mechanism by having agents interact with virtual partners whose responses could be experimentally controlled. We found that adaptation and anticipation exert parallel but independent effects on action execution: Participants initiated their actions more quickly when the upcoming partner response was compatible and, independently, when their partner had responded more quickly on the preceding trial. These findings elucidate models of action control in social interactions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Supplemental Material for Action–Effect Anticipation and Temporal Adaptation in Social Interactions

Supplemental Material for Action–Effect Anticipation and Temporal Adaptation in Social Interactions

Long-term and short-term action-effect links and their impact on effect monitoring.

People aim to produce effects in the environment, and according to ideomotor theory, actions are selected and executed via anticipations of their effects. Further, to ensure that an action has been successful and an effect has been realized, we must be able to monitor the consequences of our actions. However, action-effect links might vary between situations, some might apply for a majority of situations, while others might only apply to special occasions. With a combination of behavioral and electrophysiological markers, we show that monitoring of self-produced action effects interferes with other tasks, and that the length of effect monitoring is determined by both, long-term action-effect links that hold for most situations, and short-term action-effect links that emerge from a current setting. Effect monitoring is fast and frugal when these action-effect links allow for valid anticipation of action effects, but otherwise effect monitoring takes longer and delays a subsequent task. Specific influences of long-term and short-term links on the P1/N1 and P3a further allow to dissect the temporal dynamics of when these links interact for the purpose of effect monitoring. (PsycINFO Database Record

The influence of action-effect anticipation on bistable perception: differences between onset rivalry and ambiguous motion.

Perception is strongly shaped by the actions we perform. According to the theory of event coding, and forward models of motor control, goal-directed action preparation activates representations of desired effects. These expectations about the precise stimulus identity of one’s action-outcomes (i.e. identity predictions) are thought to selectively influence perceptual processing of action-contingent effects. However, the existing evidence for such identity-prediction effects is scarce and mixed. Here, we developed a new paradigm to capture such effects and examined whether action-outcome predictions can bias the perception of binocular onset rivalry (Experiments 1a and 1b) and bistable motion (Experiment 2). Participants performed learning tasks in which they were exposed to action-outcome associations. On test trials, actions were followed by bistable stimuli that could be perceived as being either congruent or incongruent with the aforementioned associations (i.e. rivalrous oriented gratings in Experiments 1a and 1b and spheres with ambiguous rotation directions in Experiment 2). Across three experiments, we show that, whilst exposure to action-effect associations can bias the apparent motion direction of ambiguous spheres, it fails to influence perceptual selection of grating orientations in binocular onset rivalry. This pattern of results extends previous work on ambiguous motion by demonstrating that action-induced modulations do not generalize to all types of bistable percepts.

Spatio-temporal dynamics of action-effect associations in oculomotor control

While there is ample evidence that actions are guided by anticipating their effects (ideomotor control) in the manual domain, much less is known about the underlying characteristics and dynamics of effect-based oculomotor control. Here, we address three open issues. 1) Is action-effect anticipation in oculomotor control reflected in corresponding spatial saccade characteristics in inanimate environments? 2) Does the previously reported dependency of action latency on the temporal effect delay (action-effect interval) also occur in the oculomotor domain? 3) Which temporal effect delay is optimally suited to develop strong action-effect associations over time in the oculomotor domain? Participants executed left or right free-choice saccades to peripheral traffic lights, causing an (immediate or delayed) action-contingent light switch in the upper vs. lower part of the traffic light. Results indicated that saccades were spatially shifted toward the location of the upcoming change, indicating anticipation of the effect (location). Saccade latency was affected by effect delay, suggesting that corresponding time information is integrated into event representations. Finally, delayed (vs. immediate) effects were more effective in strengthening action-effect associations over the course of the experiment, likely due to greater saliency of perceptual changes occurring during target fixation as opposed to changes during saccades (saccadic suppression). Overall, basic principles underlying ideomotor control appear to generalize to the oculomotor domain.

Category-specific features and valence in action-effect prediction: An EEG study

Despite extensive research on action-effect anticipation, little attention has been paid to the anticipation of different attributes of an event. An action-effect is not only a sensory event; it is often also an event of emotional value which can be pleasant or aversive. This latter attribute of action-effect prediction is similar to anticipation of reward versus punishment. To date the neural systems controlling sensory and reward anticipation have not been systematically compared. To this end, we designed an experiment to manipulate the sensory content and the emotional valence of the stimuli in an orthogonal fashion. We recorded and compared event-related potentials (ERPs) to the presentation of stimuli instantiating expected or unexpected features. Our results suggest (1) that both features are processed altogether and (2) that the prediction error resulting from the manipulation is reflected in an enhanced N400 component.

Effect Anticipation Affects Perceptual, Cognitive, and Motor Phases of Response Preparation: Evidence from an Event-Related Potential (ERP) Study.

The anticipation of action effects is a basic process that can be observed even for key-pressing responses in a stimulus-response paradigm. In Ziessler et al.’s (2012) experiments participants first learned arbitrary effects of key-pressing responses. In the test phase an imperative stimulus determined the response, but participants withheld the response until a Go-stimulus appeared. Reaction times (RTs) were shorter if the Go-stimulus was compatible with the learned response effect. This is strong evidence that effect representations were activated during response planning. Here, we repeated the experiment using event-related potentials (ERPs), and we found that Go-stimulus locked ERPs depended on the compatibility relationship between the Go-stimulus and the response effect. In general, this supports the interpretation of the behavioral data. More specifically, differences in the ERPs between compatible and incompatible Go-stimuli were found for the early perceptual P1 component and the later frontal P2 component. P1 differences were found only in the second half of the experiment and for long stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) between imperative stimulus and Go-stimulus, i.e., when the effect was fully anticipated and the perceptual system was prepared for the effect-compatible Go-stimulus. P2 amplitudes, likely associated with evaluation and conflict detection, were larger when Go-stimulus and effect were incompatible; presumably, incompatibility increased the difficulty of effect anticipation. Onset of response-locked lateralized readiness potentials (R-LRPs) occurred earlier under incompatible conditions indicating extended motor processing. Together, these results strongly suggest that effect anticipation affects all (i.e., perceptual, cognitive, and motor) phases of response preparation.

The temporal dynamics of the perceptual consequences of action-effect prediction

An essential aspect of voluntary action control is the ability to predict the perceptual effects of our actions. Although the influence of action-effect prediction on humans’ behavior and perception is unequivocal, it remains unclear when action-effect prediction is generated by the brain. The present study investigates the dynamics of action effect anticipation by tracing the time course of its perceptual consequences. Participants completed an acquisition phase during which specific actions (left and right key-presses) were associated with specific visual effects (upward and downward dots motion). In the test phase they performed a 2 AFC identification task in which they were required to indicate whether the dots moved upward or downward. To isolate any effects of action-effect prediction on perception, participants were presented with congruent and incongruent dot motion in which the association participants learned in the previous acquisition phase was respected and violated, respectively. Crucially, to assess the temporal dynamics of action prediction, congruent and incongruent stimuli were presented at different intervals before or after action execution. We observed higher sensitivity (d′) to motion discrimination in congruent vs. incongruent trials only when stimuli were presented from about 220ms before the action to 280ms after the action. The temporal dynamics of our effect suggest that action-effect prediction modulates perception at later stages of motor preparation.

Prediction of human actions: Expertise and task‐related effects on neural activation of the action observation network

The action observation network (AON) is supposed to play a crucial role when athletes anticipate the effect of others' actions in sports such as tennis. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore whether motor expertise leads to a differential activation pattern within the AON during effect anticipation and whether spatial and motor anticipation tasks are associated with a differential activation pattern within the AON depending on participant expertise level. Expert (N=16) and novice (N=16) tennis players observed video clips depicting forehand strokes with the instruction to either indicate the predicted direction of ball flight (spatial anticipation) or to decide on an appropriate response to the observed action (motor anticipation). The experts performed better than novices on both tennis anticipation tasks, with the experts showing stronger neural activation in areas of the AON, namely, the superior parietal lobe, the intraparietal sulcus, the inferior frontal gyrus, and the cerebellum. When novices were contrasted with experts, motor anticipation resulted in stronger activation of the ventral premotor cortex, the supplementary motor area, and the superior parietal lobe than spatial anticipation task did. In experts, the comparison of motor and spatial anticipation revealed no increased activation. We suggest that the stronger activation of areas in the AON during the anticipation of action effects in experts reflects their use of the more fine-tuned motor representations they have acquired and improved during years of training. Furthermore, results suggest that the neural processing of different anticipation tasks depends on the expertise level.

Good vibrations? Vibrotactile self-stimulation reveals anticipation of body-related action effects in motor control

Previous research suggests that motor actions are intentionally generated by recollecting their sensory consequences. Whereas this has been shown to apply to visual or auditory consequences in the environment, surprisingly little is known about the contribution of immediate, body-related consequences, such as proprioceptive and tactile reafferences. Here, we report evidence for a contribution of vibrotactile reafferences to action selection by using a response-effect compatibility paradigm. More precisely, anticipating actions to cause spatially incompatible vibrations delayed responding to a small but reliable degree. Whereas this observation suggests functional equivalence of body-related and environment-related reafferences to action control, the future application of the described experimental procedure might reveal functional peculiarities of specific types of sensory consequences in action control.

Anticipation and the control of voluntary action

Anticipation and the control of voluntary action

Instructed task demands and utilization of action effect anticipation.

Automatic acquisition of action effect associations may serve as a parsimonious account of how people acquire the basis for intentionally controlled action. However, recent research suggests that learning or the expression of action effect links might depend on whether task demands impose either a stimulus based mode of action control or an intention based action control mode. In the current study we develop a paradigm that allows the mode of action control to be varied via instructions while keeping stimuli identical. Participants were to respond to the location of a cloud of dots. Their actions were followed by predictable visual effects, either consistently congruent or incongruent with the location of the action. In Experiment 1, a displaced new cloud of random dots was presented as a spatial action effect. In Experiment 2 an arrow was presented as effect with a pointing direction congruent or incongruent to the response position. The location of the stimulus in the reference frame was easy to detect in some of the trials while the location of the cloud of dots was completely ambiguous in others. The instruction manipulation targeted the latter trials, suggesting to one group of participants to freely choose a key in a difficult trial, while asking another group to react to their spontaneous impression in the event of a difficult stimulus. In this way, we aimed at rendering actions either as stimulus driven or internally generated. By this we could investigate how effect anticipation changed with practice depending on action mode. We employed the impact of action effect compatibility on speed and choice of action as a measure for action effect anticipation. Our results suggest that action effect associations can be acquired when instructions suggest stimulus based action control or intention based action control. Instructions aiming at the mode of task processing can influence when and how action effect links influence behavior.

The internal anticipation of sensory action effects: when action induces FFA and PPA activity

Voluntary action – in particular the ability to produce desired effects in the environment – is fundamental to human existence. According to ideomotor theory we can achieve goals in the environment by means of anticipating their outcomes. We aimed at providing neurophysiological evidence for the assumption that performing actions calls for the activation of brain areas associated with the sensory effects usually evoked by the actions. We conducted an fMRI study in which right and left button presses lead to the presentation of face and house pictures. We compared a baseline phase with the same phase after participants experienced the association between button presses and pictures. We found an increase in the parahippocampal place area (PPA) for the response that has been associated with house pictures and fusiform face area (FFA) for the response that has been coupled with face pictures. This observation constitutes support for ideomotor theory.

Learned patterns of action-effect anticipation contribute to the spatial displacement of continuously moving stimuli.

When participants control the horizontal movements of a stimulus and indicate its vanishing point after it unexpectedly vanishes, the perceived vanishing point is displaced beyond the actual vanishing point, and the size of the displacement is directly related to the action-effect anticipation one has to generate to successfully control the stimulus. The present experiments examined whether learning a pattern of action-effect anticipation would later impact one's perception of moving stimuli. While 1 participant (the controller) controlled a dot's movements across a computer screen, another (the observer), who could neither see nor hear the controller, watched the dot's movements on a separate monitor. When the dot unexpectedly vanished, the observer indicated the vanishing point. After 40 trials, participants switched roles. While serving as observers, all participants generated forward displacements, but those who did so after acquiring control experience produced larger displacement. Subsequent experiments indicated the larger displacement was due to action-effect anticipation the participants learned while either controlling the dot or observing another do so.

Action-effect anticipation in infant action control.

There is increasing evidence that action effects play a crucial role in action understanding and action control not only in adults but also in infants. Most of the research in infants focused on the learning of action–effect contingencies or how action effects help infants to infer goals in other persons’ actions. In contrast, the present research aimed at demonstrating that infants control their own actions by action–effect anticipation once they know about specific action–effect relations. About 7 and 9-month olds observed an experimenter demonstrating two actions that differed regarding the action–effect assignment. Either a red-button press or a blue-button press or no button press elicited interesting acoustical and visual effects. The 9-month olds produced the effect action at first, with shorter latency and longer duration sustaining a direct impact of action–effect anticipation on action control. In 7-month olds the differences due to action–effect manipulation were less profound indicating developmental changes at this age.

The planning and execution of short auditory sequences

Action planning, but not action execution, in speeded tasks is typically faster when responses and their effects are compatible than when they are incompatible. We tested whether response-effect compatibility (REC) affects the execution of music-like sequential actions that require temporal regularity rather than rapidity. Musicians responded to metronomic visual stimuli by producing sequences of three taps at a specific tempo on three vertically aligned keys. Each tap triggered a tone. Key-to-tone mapping was either compatible or incompatible in terms of spatial height and pitch height. The results indicated that tap timing was more accurate with compatible than with incompatible mappings, both for taps produced before (Tap 1) and after (Taps 2 and 3) the onset of auditory feedback. Thus, the observed influence of REC on action execution was not due exclusively to actual auditory feedback. The anticipation of distal action effects may be involved in planning the dynamics of temporally precise movements.

The role of action effects in infants' action control.

In adults, the selection and the planning of actions are influenced by the anticipation of desired action effects. However, the role of action effects for action control in infants is still an unresolved issue. One important prerequisite for infants' action control is that infants are able to relate certain movements to certain effects. To test this assumption, it was investigated how infants' action control is affected by action effects. By applying an imitation paradigm, we studied 12- and 18-month-old infants who first observed an adult experimenter demonstrating a three-step action sequence on a toy bear. In three experimental groups, the second action step, the third action step, or no action step elicited an arbitrary sound as an additional acoustic action effect. It was coded how often each of the target actions was performed by the infant in a subsequent 90-s test phase. As predicted, the frequency of the infant's target action varied depending on which action step elicited the action effect. In both age groups, the target action that was combined with an acoustical effect was not only produced more often but also occurred with lower latency and was in most cases the first target action shown by the infants. These results are interpreted as evidence of the important role of action effects in infants' action control.