Action Intentions Research Articles

The effect of context and reason on the neural correlates of intentions

Many studies have identified networks in parietal and prefrontal cortex that are involved in intentional action. Yet, our understanding of the way these networks are involved in intentions is still very limited. In this study, we investigate two characteristics of these processes: context- and reason-dependence of the neural states associated with intentions. We ask whether these states depend on the context a person is in and the reasons they have for choosing an action. We used a combination of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and multivariate decoding to directly assess the context- and reason-dependency of the neural states underlying intentions. We show that action intentions can be decoded from fMRI data based on a classifier trained in the same context and with the same reason, in line with previous decoding studies. Furthermore, we found that intentions can be decoded across different reasons for choosing an action. However, decoding across different contexts was not successful. We found anecdotal to moderate evidence against context-invariant information in all regions of interest and for all conditions but one. These results suggest that the neural states associated with intentions are modulated by the context of the action.

From Moderate Action to Radical Protest Intentions

Abstract We examine how anti-Trump democrats ( N = 460), prior to the 2020 election, managed their options to protest, focusing on when moderate collective action predicts more radical intentions to protest. We investigate the relationship of moderate action involvement and effectiveness with radical action intentions and the effects of various other variables such as intergroup emotions, group identification, and political vs. participative efficacy. Although moderate action involvement is correlated with radical intentions, the effectiveness of moderate action is negatively related to radical intentions. Analogously, while political efficacy positively predicts radical action, participative efficacy negatively predicts radical action, both with increasing moderate action experience. Social-identity-based collective action models explain this radical use of political violence as protest (e.g., ESIM) and the counteracting effect of efficacy forms (SIDE, NTL).

Object Affordance-Based Implicit Interaction for Wheelchair-Mounted Robotic Arm Using a Laser Pointer.

With the growth of the world's population, limited healthcare resources cannot provide adequate nursing services for all people in need. The wheelchair-mounted robotic arm (WMRA) with interactive technology could help to improve users' self-care ability and relieve nursing stress. However, the users struggle to control the WMRA due to complex operations. To use the WMRA with less burden, this paper proposes an object affordance-based implicit interaction technology using a laser pointer. Firstly, a laser semantic identification algorithm combined with the YOLOv4 and the support vector machine (SVM) is designed to identify laser semantics. Then, an implicit action intention reasoning algorithm, based on the concept of object affordance, is explored to infer users' intentions and learn their preferences. For the purpose of performing the actions about task intention in the scene, the dynamic movement primitives (DMP) and the finite state mechanism (FSM) are respectively used to generalize the trajectories of actions and reorder the sequence of actions in the template library. In the end, we verified the feasibility of the proposed technology on a WMRA platform. Compared with the previous method, the proposed technology can output the desired intention faster and significantly reduce the user's limb involvement time (about 85%) in operating the WMRA under the same task.

Using videos in floods and bushfires to educate, signal risk, and promote protective action in the community

Videos are commonly used by emergency services agencies in natural hazard emergencies to communicate to the public about the hazard, its possible risks, and to promote protective action. To evaluate the efficacy of the videos being disseminated and amplified during an event, this research examined the extent to which different types of videos trigger risk perceptions, promote protective action, and improve knowledge about the hazard and impact. The findings suggest a video containing a smaller number of facts is most useful at impacting the public’s hazard knowledge, visualisations (real-life or infographics) of facts helps improve knowledge, and videos highlighting the impact an emergency is having (or had) through people’s experiences helped improve hazard knowledge, risk perceptions, and protective action intentions. Finally, while footage of a bushfire triggers threat perceptions and some coping appraisal, the style is not as useful for building hazard knowledge. The research extends visual risk literacy knowledge and offers practical guidance for agencies operating in high-risk environments seeking to achieve behavioural compliance. The research argues videos will continue to be an important tool in the public information and warning milieu for any risk event.

외식업 경영자의 배달 앱 활용을 통한 지각된 가치가 앱 서비스 행동 의도에 미치는 영향

Recently, restaurant consumers obtain restaurant information through social media restaurant-related companies as well as information obtained from people around them when choosing a restaurant, and various restaurant search activities using SNS are being conducted. In the previous study, research was conducted focusing on consumers' purchase behavioral intentions according to the emotional marketing of offline stores operated by restaurant-related companies, so research on experience marketing and co-experiences that can be felt online and offline through SNS in the restaurant field is insufficient. Therefore, in this study, after investigating the effect of four sub-factors of dining out-related experience marketing on co-experience through SNS, we will identify and study how the co-experience influenced by experience marketing is related to behavior intention. As a result of the study, sensory, emotional, behavior-cognitive, and relational experiences, which are sub-variables of experiential marketing, were found to have a significant effect on co- experience-participation. Emotional, behavior-cognitive, and relational marketing, which are sub-variables of experiential marketing, were found to have a significant effect on co-experience-sympathy/sharing, but sensory experience was found to have no significant effect. Participation and empathy/sharing, which are sub-variables of co-experience, were found to have a significant effect on action intention. Emotional, behavior-cognitive, and relational marketing, which are sub-variables of experiential marketing, were found to have a significant effect on behavioral intention, but sensory experience was found to have no significant effect.

Sitting and Standing Intention Detection Based on Dynamical Region Connectivity and Entropy of EEG

Based on the brain signals, decoding and analyzing the gait features to make a reliable prediction of action intention are the core issues in the brain computer interface (BCI)-based hybrid rehabilitation and intelligent walking aid robot system. In order to realize the classification and recognition of the most basic gait processes such as standing, sitting, and quiet, this paper proposes a feature representation method based on the signal complexity and entropy of each brain region. Through the statistical analysis of these parameters between different conditions, these characteristics which sensitive to different actions are determined as a feature vector, and the classification and recognition of these actions are completed by combing support vector machine, linear discriminant analysis, and logistic regression. Experimental results show the proposed method can better realize the recognition of the aforementioned action intention. The recognition accuracy of standing, sitting, and quiet of 13 subjects is higher than 80.9%, and the highest one can reach 86.8%. Directed dynamic brain network analysis of the 8 brain regions shows that the occurrence of lower limb movement will weaken the dependence between brain regions, resulting in the weakening of network topological connection. The result has significant value for understanding human’s brain cognitive characteristics in the process of lower limb movement and carrying out the study of BCI based strategy and system for lower limb rehabilitation.

Multiscale kinematics of action intention

Human motion contains rich contextual information about not only action, but action intention. In two experiments, we investigated whether the multiscale kinematic information that differentiates intentional actions is the same information to which observers attend when asked to observe an actor’s intended movement. To do so, we first recorded an actor’s movement kinematics while performing four different intentional sit-to-stand actions. Analyzing the differences in movement kinematics, we then identified the joints that contributed to differentiating the actions using principal components analysis and multinomial regression. Observers were then shown point-light displays of these movements and given a forced-choice task to select which action the actor intended to complete and were highly accurate at this task. We hypothesized that if perceptual information used to perceive action intention corresponds to the kinematic information that differentiates among the four possible actions, then observers’ gaze should center more on the joints identified in the movement analysis. This hypothesis was supported, suggesting that joint kinematics that differentiate possible actions are the same joint kinematics to which observers attend in order to successfully differentiate movement intentions in others.

Review on powered exoskeletons perception of human motion intentions

Powered exoskeletons are movable machines that are worn on users and detect and respond to their movements. They improve users' abilities, such as strength or speed, by using electric motors, hydraulic systems, etc. Increasingly powerful exoskeletons are being developed, with applications in military, medical, manufacturing, and a variety of other fields. Powered exoskeletons predict human action intentions using a variety of control methods. This paper focuses primarily on the control method of sEMG (surface electromyography) signals, with the goal of reviewing these control strategies used by various powered exoskeletons. The paper concludes from the research that the powered exoskeleton's perception accuracy for the user's motion intention determines its work efficiency and the user's experience. Powered exoskeletons controlled by surface electromyography signals now hold great promise because they can be used for not only general power-assisted exoskeletons, but also for medical rehabilitation.

Skilled deceivers are better action perceivers and vice versa

Skilled actors rely on deception to disrupt the perceptual ability of opponents who seek to anticipate action intentions. Common-coding theory (Prinz, 1997) purports that action and perception share common origins in the brain, and therefore it seems plausible that the ability to ‘see through’ a deceptive action would be associated with a capacity to perform the same action. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the ability to perform a deceptive action would be related to the ability to perceive the same type of action. Fourteen skilled rugby players performed deceptive (side-step) and non-deceptive actions while running towards a camera. The deceptiveness of those participants was determined by testing the ability of a separate group of eight equally skilled observers to anticipate the impeding running directions using a temporally occluded video-based test. Based on the overall response accuracies, participants were separated into high- and low-deceptiveness groups. These two groups then themselves took part in a video-based test. Results revealed that the skilled deceivers had a significant advantage in their ability to better anticipate the action outcomes of highly deceptive actions. The skilled deceivers’ sensitivity to discriminate deceptive from non-deceptive actions was significantly better than that of less-skilled deceivers when viewing the most-deceptive actor. Moreover, the skilled perceivers performed actions that appeared to be better disguised than those of the less-skilled perceivers. These findings suggest that, consistent with common-coding theory, the perception of deceptive and non-deceptive actions is associated with the capability to produce deceptive actions and vice versa.

Mobilising ideas in the COVID-19 pandemic: Anti-lockdown actions and the Identity-Deprivation-Efficacy-Action-Subjective well-being model

We tested how well the Identity-Deprivation-Efficacy-Action-Subjective-wellbeing (IDEAS) model predicts citizens’ intentions to engage in collective action opposing their government, and their subjective well-being. Representative samples from Scotland, Wales, and the county of Kent in England were surveyed during the COVID-19 pandemic in October 2020 (N = 1,536). Results largely support our preregistered hypotheses, confirming that the IDEAS model offers a valid explanatory framework for how relative deprivation predicts both collective action opposing one’s government and levels of subjective well-being. In the case of collective action, there were significant effects of collective relative deprivation (cognitive and affective) and collective efficacy on social change beliefs, which in turn positively predicted collective action intentions. The role of national identification was more nuanced, revealing both negative indirect effects via collective efficacy and relative deprivation, and a positive indirect effect via political orientation. Findings also suggest interesting directions for future research on national identification.

The influence of perceived threat and political mistrust on politicized identity and normative and violent nonnormative collective action

The present research examined the interplay of social threat and political mistrust on collective action intentions in the context of Hong Kong social unrest. We investigated perceived social threat from a dominant outgroup and mistrust in the political system as two antecedents of politicized identity, and as indirect predictors of intentions to participate in normative and violent nonnormative collective action. Across two studies (Study 1: N = 398; Study 2: N = 200), we found that perceived social threat, political mistrust, and their interaction had positive significant associations with action intentions (Study 1) and an interactive association (Study 2) with politicized identity. Both studies indicated indirect effects of social threat and political mistrust on both normative and violent collective action intentions through politicized identity. Politicized identity and a broader Hong Kong identity were both directly associated with normative collective action intentions. However, only politicized identity was associated with violent collective action intentions.

Creating safe environments: optimal acoustic alarming of laypeople in fire prevention

Hazards like fires occur regularly and can cost people’s lives. Optimal auditory alarm signals enable laypeople to recognise dangers and to protect themselves. Existing fire alarm sound research focuses on alarm sounds and voice alerts presented singularly. We explored a combination of both and aimed to identify alarm signals that work optimally in everyday life. Thus, we conducted two online experiments: In Study 1 (N = 379), we tested eight alarm sounds regarding their typicality, their familiarity, their arousal, their valence, and their dominance. Siren-like alarm sounds were the most effective. In Study 2 (N = 206), we combined the four most effective alarm sounds with a voice alert. The voice alert reinforced ambiguity reduction, action motivation, and action intention. Hence, we suggest using alarm sounds with siren-like patterns. They should be combined with a voice alert to foster a quick and specific (target task-oriented) reaction. Practitioner summary: Warning laypeople is of great importance in time-critical hazards. In two remote testing studies (N Total = 585), auditory alarm sounds with siren-like patterns resulted in the most distinct and emotional perception. Combining the alarm sound with a voice alert adds meaning to the alarm and fosters action intention. Abbreviations: DIN: Deutsches Institut für Normung [German Institute for Standardization]; ISO: International Organization for Standardization; Mixed MANOVA: mixed measures multivariate analysis of variance; rmMANOVA: repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance.

Online collective action: Procedural unfairness and action support as predictors based on a dual pathway model

To investigate the social-psychological mechanism of online collective action, we explored the impacts of procedural unfairness and action support in accordance with the dual pathway model of coping with collective disadvantage. Our results indicated that manipulated procedural unfairness and action support independently predicted online collective action intentions in protesting against electrical power restrictions in dormitories during winter for Chinese university students. Procedural unfairness predicted this via emotionfocused coping (group-based anger) but not via problem-focused coping (group efficacy), whereas action support had a facilitative effect via both emotion- and problem-focused coping. Our findings have both theoretical and practical implications for the mobilization, organization, and prevention of and intervention in online collective action.

The Effect of Moral Foundations on Intergroup Relations: The Salience of Fairness Promotes the Acceptance of Minority Groups

Previous research suggests that moral foundations have consequences for intergroup relations, but the evidence is mostly correlational and gathered mainly in north American countries. This work aimed to replicate the conceptual findings in the European context and test the effects of manipulating a moral framing on the perceived (im)morality of minority groups, willingness to defend their rights collectively and support for anti-immigration policies. A correlational study showed that binding and individualizing foundations contributed to predict support for anti-immigration policies and willingness to participate in collective actions for immigrants’ rights. A follow-up experiment suggested that emphasizing the benefits for society of fairness—an individualizing foundation—(vs. authority—a binding foundation) may improve intergroup evaluations, increase collective action intentions, and reduce support for anti-immigration policies. Although a second preregistered experiment could not replicate the results, complementary analyses suggested some positive effects of fairness compared with the control and authority conditions. These results open a path to investigate whether a fairness moral reasoning might improve attitudes toward immigrants.

Cross-group friendship and collective action in community solidarity initiatives with displaced people and resident/nationals.

Introduction: In Ireland, people seeking asylum (displaced people) receive accommodation in a system called "Direct Provision" (DP) while they wait for their applications for protection to be processed. The living conditions of DP have been described as illegal and inhumane by national and international human rights groups, and the system exacerbates the social exclusion of displaced people. Community responses to DP by displaced people and resident/nationals of Ireland include the creation of informal groups called community solidarity initiatives (CSI), through which cross-group friendships are forged by participation in shared cultural activities. We hypothesized that, compared to non-CSI participants, participants of CSI would report more cross-group friendships, and that more cross-group friendships would predict stronger collective action intentions to support the campaign to end DP, especially among resident/nationals. Methods: We recruited residents/nationals and displaced persons with and without CSI experience to complete a self-report questionnaire (n = 199), measuring cross-group friendship, collective action intentions, and intergroup attitudes. Data were collected between July 2020 and March 2021, using a combination of online and paper surveys. We conducted ANOVA and conditional process analyses on the data to test our hypotheses. Results: As predicted, CSI participants reported more contact with cross-group friends and stronger collective action intentions than non-participators. Conditional process analysis indicated that CSI participation facilitated resident/nationals' political solidarity with displaced people through cross-group friendship. Discussion: Findings identify the role of group membership in the relationship between contact and collective action for migrant justice, illustrating the potential of CSI to bolster intergroup solidarity and social cohesion through shared activities and cross-group friendship. As such, findings make an important contribution to the literature on intergroup contact, solidarity, and social cohesion, and will be relevant for community practitioners, civil society organisations, NGOs, and policy makers.

Intent Prediction in Human–Human Interactions

The human ability to infer others' intent is innate and crucial to development. Machines ought to acquire this ability for seamless interaction with humans. In this article, we propose an agent model for predicting the intent of actors in human–human interactions. This requires <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">simultaneous generation and recognition of an interaction</i> at any time, for which end-to-end models are scarce. The proposed agent actively samples its environment via a sequence of glimpses. At each sampling instant, the model infers the observation class and completes the partially observed body motion. It learns the sequence of body locations to sample by jointly minimizing the classification and generation errors. The model is evaluated on videos of two-skeleton interactions under two settings: (first person) one skeleton is the modeled agent and the other skeleton's joint movements constitute its visual observation, and (third person) an audience is the modeled agent and the two interacting skeletons' joint movements constitute its visual observation. Three methods for implementing the attention mechanism are analyzed using benchmark datasets. One of them, where attention is driven by sensory prediction error, achieves the highest classification accuracy in both settings by sampling less than 50% of the skeleton joints, while also being the most efficient in terms of model size. This is the first known attention-based agent to learn end-to-end from two-person interactions for intent prediction, with high accuracy and efficiency.

Constructivist Understanding of Interaction between Law and Morality in Identity Formation

Positivism contends that knowledge is acquired through collection and processing of objective facts that must be further subjected to analysis. Verstehen tradition contends that understanding the intentionality of actors is very important in gaining knowledge in social sciences. Constructivism contends that Reality is shaped due to inter-subjective meaning attached to events by relevant actors and institutions. Constructivism adopts middle path between Individualism and Holism. Identity is given lot of importance in the Constructivist Approach. Morality refers to the basic principles and values that play great role in defining the permissible limits allowed to members of given society. It helps in self conception of a group and is a great stabilising force. Law refers to the regulation of activities supported by a strong sanctioning authority. Law often supports the notions of Morality, though there may be a variance between the two notions. Identity is subjected to flux and notions of morality change with impact of social, economic and technological forces. Law is also modified to ensure smooth change in basic norms governing an identity. The impact of Religious Fundamentalism is very important in orthodox societies as many religious leaders support old values and laws even in the context of tremendously changed time.

A hierarchical dynamic Bayesian learning network for EMG-based early prediction of voluntary movement intention

Decoding human action intention prior to motion onset with surface electromyograms (sEMG) is an emerging neuroengineering topic with interesting clinical applications such as intelligent control of powered prosthesis/exoskeleton devices. Despite extensive prior works in the related fields, it remains a technical challenge due to considerable variability of complex multi-muscle activation patterns in terms of volatile spatio-temporal characteristics. To address this issue, we first hypothesize that the inherent variability of the idle state immediately preceding the motion initiation needs to be addressed explicitly. We therefore design a hierarchical dynamic Bayesian learning network model that integrates an array of Gaussian mixture model – hidden Markov models (GMM-HMMs), where each GMM-HMM learns the multi-sEMG processes either during the idle state, or during the motion initiation phase of a particular motion task. To test the hypothesis and evaluate the new learning network, we design and build a upper-limb sEMG-joystick motion study system, and collect data from 11 healthy volunteers. The data collection protocol adapted from the psychomotor vigilance task includes repeated and randomized binary hand motion tasks (push or pull) starting from either of two designated idle states: relaxed (with minimal muscle tones), or prepared (with muscle tones). We run a series of cross-validation tests to examine the performance of the method in comparison with the conventional techniques. The results suggest that the idle state recognition favors the dynamic Bayesian model over a static classification model. The results also show a statistically significant improvement in motion prediction accuracy by the proposed method (93.83±6.41%) in comparison with the conventional GMM-HMM method (89.71±8.98%) that does not explicitly account for the idle state. Moreover, we examine the progress of prediction accuracy over the course of motion initiation and identify the important hidden states that warrant future research.

The Rule of “Business with the Affinities” is an Original Study

The study was keen to collect the origins of “intention” in Islamic law, jurisprudence and principles through the rooting of the prophetic rule (actions by intentions). The intention for it, the place of the intention, the rule of its pronunciation, the intention between the corner and the conditional, and its time, and the conditions of the rule by clarifying the conditions of the intention and the intention and the intended action, and what needs the intention of actions, then the study concluded with a statement of the most prominent results of the research and its recommendations.

Self-uniqueness increases women's willingness to participate in collective action for gender justice, but not support for sex quotas.

Affiliation with certain groups allows to simultaneously satisfy two competing needs: the need to be moderately different from others and the need to belong. We propose that the feminist movement, that has been turning towards individualistic goals based on individual empowerment, may be one of such groups for women. In three studies we examined the relationship between self-uniqueness and women's support for collective action and structural measures (i.e. sex quotas) promoted by the feminist movement. A first correlational study indicated that self-uniqueness need is positively associated with willingness to participate in collective action for gender justice generally, but not with support for sex quotas. Consistently, two experimental studies (Studies 2-3) found that priming self-uniqueness increases collective action intentions, but not quota support. Study 3 also showed that the effect of self-uniqueness on collective action intentions for gender justice may be mediated by greater perceptions of personal discrimination for being a woman and fusion with the feminist movement. These results suggest that appeals to self-uniqueness may attract women to the feminist movement but do not guarantee support for concrete collective measures against gender inequality.