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Proactive Effect Monitoring does not Differ between Free and Forced Action Modes
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Abstract
When our actions yield predictable consequences in the environment, our eyes often already saccade towards the locations we expect these consequences to appear at. Such spontaneous anticipatory saccades occur based on bi-directional associations between action and effect formed by prior experience. That is, our eye movements are guided by expectations derived from prior learning history. Anticipatory saccades presumably reflect a proactive effect monitoring process that prepares a later comparison of expected and actual effect. Here, we examined whether anticipatory saccades emerged under forced choice conditions when only actions but not target stimuli were predictive of future effects and whether action mode (forced choice vs. free choice, i.e., stimulus-based vs. stimulus-independent choice) affected anticipatory saccades. Participants produced predictable visual effects on the left/right side via forced choice and free choice left/right key presses. Action and visual effect were spatially compatible in one half of the experiment and spatially incompatible in the other half. Irrespective of whether effects were predicted by target stimuli in addition to participants' actions, in both action modes, we observed anticipatory saccades towards the location of future effects. Importantly, neither the frequency, nor latency or amplitude of these anticipatory saccades significantly differed between forced choice and free choice action modes. Overall, our findings suggest that proactive effect monitoring of future action consequences as reflected in anticipatory saccades does not differ between forced choice and free choice action modes.
Cognitive control is essential for adaptive goal-directed action and has been linked to learning. Here, we investigated whether proactive effect monitoring (i.e., a proactive cognitive control process) could be instantiated by one-shot learning. When an action consistently yields the same effect, we form a bi-directional action-effect association. This allows us to both select the appropriate action to achieve a desired effect by anticipating it and to initiate a proactive effect monitoring process that prepares the later comparison of expected and actual effect. Proactive effect monitoring is reflected in anticipatory saccades towards the location of an action's future effect. Importantly, anticipatory saccade latencies also reflect expected effect delays, allowing for an assessment of the quality of proactive effect monitoring. In light of recent studies demonstrating that one-shot learning of control is possible, we assessed whether temporally-distinct (i.e. qualitatively-efficient) proactive effect monitoring could be instantiated by one-shot learning. Participants responded to targets with left/right key presses. Correct left/right responses predictably led to a visual effect after a short/long (200ms/800ms) effect delay. The mapping between responses and their respective effect delays changed every four, eight, or twelve trials (randomly allocated), so that participants could not predict when action-effect delay mappings would switch. Anticipatory saccade latencies were longer for long as compared to short effect delays after a single (re-)learning instance to the extent of participants' individual perceptions of time. This demonstrates one-shot learning of qualitatively-efficient proactive effect monitoring. Thus, anticipatory saccades provide a novel method of directly assessing proactive cognitive control. One-shot learning of proactive effect monitoring 3 Public Significance Statement Our actions often cause predictable consequences in our environment. Through everyday experience, we learn which action causes which consequence. This allows us to anticipate future consequences of our actions and already move our eyes to where these consequences will appear in the future which supports our adaptation to unexpected events. Here, we show that we only need to experience the timing of our actions' consequences once to anticipatorily look towards their future position correspondingly early/late, in a temporally-adapted way. The degree to which we anticipatorily adapt to the timing of our actions' future consequences further depends on individual timing abilities. One-shot learning of proactive effect monitoring 4
According to ideomotor theory, human action control employs anticipations of one´s own actions´ future consequences, that is, action effect anticipations, as a means of triggering actions that will produce desired outcomes (e.g., Hommel, Müsseler, Aschersleben, & Prinz, 2001). Using the response-effect compatibility paradigm (Kunde, 2001), we demonstrate that the anticipation of one´s own manual actions´ future consequences not only triggers appropriate (i.e., instructed) actions, but simultaneously induces spontaneous (uninstructed) anticipatory saccades to the location of future action consequences. In contrast to behavioral response-effect compatibility effects which have been linked to processes of action selection and action planning, our results suggest that these anticipatory saccades serve the function of outcome evaluation, that is, the comparison of expected/intended and observed action outcomes. Overall, our results demonstrate the informational value of additionally analyzing uninstructed behavioral components complementary to instructed responses and allow us to specify essential mechanisms of the complex interplay between the manual and oculomotor control system in goal-directed action control.
Ideomotor theory considers bidirectional action-effect associations to be the fundamental building blocks for intentional action. The present study employed a novel pupillometric and oculomotor paradigm to study developmental changes in the role of action-effects in the acquisition of voluntary action. Our findings suggest that both 7- and 12-month-olds (and adults) can use acquired action-effect bindings to predict action outcomes but only 12-month-olds (and adults) showed evidence for employing action-effects to select actions. This dissociation supports the idea that infants acquire action-effect knowledge before they have developed the cognitive machinery necessary to make use of that knowledge to perform intentional actions.
When performing an action, people pick up associations between their actions and the resulting consequences of that action, a phenomenon that has been termed response (R)-effect (E) learning. In the present study, we investigated incidental R-E learning in a forced-choice-that is, a stimulus (S)-based-acquisition mode. Specifically, the study examined at which timescale R-E learning evolves-that is, how many encounters are actually needed to form stable R-E associations. The learning of R-E associations was assessed in a subsequent test phase via effect-based response priming. Experiment 1 tested 4 different numbers of S-R-E repetitions for a 2-2-2 S-R-E mapping. Experiment 2 disentangled the contributions of S-E and R-E associations to the facilitating impact of effect-based response priming by means of a 4-2-4 S-R-E mapping. Experiment 3 investigated whether R-E associations can be picked up even when a given E cannot be unequivocally predicted based on the antecedent S in case of inconsistent S-R-E couplings. Together, the results of the present study clearly show that R-E learning occurs in a stimulus-based action mode and that it evolves very rapidly after only 12 S-R-E repetitions. Moreover, the present findings suggest that at least in this initial phase of learning, complete S-R-E consistency seems to be relevant for R-E learning.
According to ideomotor theory, voluntary actions are selected and initiated by means of anticipated action effects. Prior experiments yielded evidence for these effect anticipations with response-effect (R-E) compatibility phenomena using blocked R-E relations. Daily actions, however, typically evoke different effects depending on the situational context. In the present study, we accounted for this natural variability and investigated R-E compatibility effects by a trial-by-trial variation of R-E compatibility relations. In line with recent observations regarding ideomotor learning, R-E compatibility influenced responding only when participants responded in free choice trials assuming that participants then adopted an intention-based action control mode. In contrast, R-E compatibility had no impact when participants responded according to imperative stimuli throughout the experiment, thus when participants adopted a stimulus-based action control mode. Interestingly, once an intention-based mode was established because of free choice trials within an experimental block, we observed response compatibility effects in free as well as forced choice trials. These findings extend and refine theoretical assumptions on different action control modes in goal-directed behavior and the specific contribution of ideomotor processes to intention-based action control.
Ideomotor accounts of human action control posit that human agents represent actions in terms of their perceivable consequences; selecting, planning, and initiating a voluntary action is thus assumed to be mediated by action-effect anticipations. Corresponding empirical investigations have often employed arbitrary effects in the agent’s environment to study action-effect learning and effect-based action control. This strategy has provided accumulating evidence in support of ideomotor mechanisms, but the widespread focus on environment-related action effects has also created misperceptions of what ideomotor accounts aim to explain. Moreover, this strategy has also given rise to misunderstandings of critical epistemological limitations, especially regarding the theoretical relevance of negative results in common experimental paradigms. These recent developments call for a theoretical clarification of the concept of action effects. I propose that many misunderstandings can be resolved by embracing the theoretical role of body-related compared to environment-related actions’ effects. I show how the concept of such effects may inform current debates and how this focus can guide future research related to ideomotor action control, with a main challenge being the derivation of testable and falsifiable theories from the ideomotor framework.
Actions aim to produce effects in the environment. To accomplish this properly, we not only have to recruit the appropriate motor patterns, but also we must be able to monitor whether an intended effect has ultimately been realized. Here, we investigated the impact of such effect monitoring on performance in multitasking situations: Multitasking basically means to produce and monitor multiple actions and effects in fast succession. We show that effect monitoring cannot run in parallel, without causing processing decrements, with a second task. Also, monitoring of effects that are spatially incompatible to a response seems to take longer than the monitoring of spatially compatible action effects (Experiments 1 through 4). We further argue that effect monitoring is essential toward learning of response-effect associations, as it captures not only anticipated action effects, but also unpredictable occurrences in the environment (Experiments 5a and 5b).
This article provides a Bayes factor approach to multiway analysis of variance (ANOVA) that allows researchers to state graded evidence for effects or invariances as determined by the data. ANOVA is conceptualized as a hierarchical model where levels are clustered within factors. The development is comprehensive in that it includes Bayes factors for fixed and random effects and for within-subjects, between-subjects, and mixed designs. Different model construction and comparison strategies are discussed, and an example is provided. We show how Bayes factors may be computed with BayesFactor package in R and with the JASP statistical package. (PsycINFO Database Record
A framework for action planning, called ideomotor theory, suggests that actions are represented by their perceivable effects. Thus, any activation of the effect image, either endogenously or exogenously, will trigger the corresponding action. We review contemporary studies relating to ideomotor theory in which researchers have investigated various manipulations of action effects and how those effects acquire discriminative control over the actions. Evidence indicates that the knowledge about the relation between response and effect is still a critical component even when other factors, such as stimulus-response or response-response relations, are controlled. When consistent tone effects are provided after responses are made, performance in serial-reaction tasks is better than when the effects are random. Methodology in which acquisition and test stages are used with choice-reaction tasks shows that an action is automatically associated with its effect bilaterally and that anticipation of the effect facilitates action. Ideomotor phenomena include stimulus-response compatibility, in which the perceptual feature of the stimulus activates its corresponding action code when the stimulus itself resembles the effect codes. For this reason, other stimulus-driven action facilitation such as ideomotor action and imitation are treated as ideomotor phenomena and are reviewed. Ideomotor theory also implies that ongoing action affects perception of concurrent events, a topic which we review briefly. Issues concerning ideomotor theory are identified and evaluated. We categorize the range of ideomotor explanations into several groups by whether intermediate steps are assumed to complete sensorimotor transformation or not and by whether a general theoretical framework or a more restricted one is provided by the account.
Recent studies reported converging evidence for action-effect associations if participants adopted an intention-based action control mode in free choice conditions, whereas no evidence for action-effect associations was found when participants adopted a stimulus-based mode in forced choice conditions. However, it is not yet clear whether action control modes moderate acquisition or usage of action-effect associations. In the present experiment, two groups of participants underwent an acquisition phase consisting of either free or forced choice key presses that produced irrelevant, but contingent effect tones. In a subsequent test phase, participants freely chose the key to press after former effect tones were presented. A reliable consistency effect resulted for both the groups, i.e. participants preferred the key that produced the irrelevant tone in the preceding acquisition phase. In combination with prior findings, this consistency effect suggests that usage, but not acquisition of action-effect associations depends on an intention-based action control mode.