Abstract Structural Representations of Goal-Directed Behavior

Abstract

Linguistic theory holds that the structure of a sentence can be described in abstract syntactic terms, independent of the specific words the sentence contains. Nonlinguistic behavior, including goal-directed action, is also theorized to have an underlying structural, or "syntactic," organization. We propose that purposive action sequences are represented cognitively in terms of a means-ends parse, which is a formal specification of how actions fit together to accomplish desired outcomes. To test this theory, we leveraged the phenomenon of structural priming in two experiments. As predicted, participants read sentences describing action sequences faster when these sentences were presented amid other sentences sharing the same parse. Results from a second experiment indicate that the underlying representations relevant to observed action sequences are not strictly tied to language processing. Our results suggest that the structure of goal-directed behavior may be represented abstractly, independently of specific actions and goals, just as linguistic syntax is thought to stand independent of other levels of representation.

Is there a domain-general cognitive structuring system? Evidence from structural priming across music, math, action descriptions, and language

“…Scheepers et al, 2011) and action description (cfr. Allen et al, 2010) significantly influenced the preferred attachment choice in relative clause completion. Furthermore, these within-domain and cross-domain attachment priming effects were similar for all priming conditions.…”

“…It has been shown that the attachment structures of means end action descriptions can prime each other and are thus abstractly represented (cfr. Allen et al, 2010). We will refer to sentences with means-end parsing in action description as means-end sentences.…”

“…Scheepers et al, 2011), and sentences referring to goal-directed actions (thus including a non-syntactic attachment structure). When describing goal directed behavior, the sentence can be processed according to the ''means end" structure of the described actions (Allen et al, 2010). For example, the sentence ''I close the curtains, take the scissors, and cut the paper" contains two actions which directly address a goal (e.g., ''close the curtains"), and one action which can be seen as a preparatory action (e.g., ''take the scissors").…”

Distinct brain signatures of content and structure violation during action observation

“…The notion of syntax was further applied also to human actions in studies exploring the cognitive processes (Allen, Ibara, Seymour, Cordova and Botvinick, 2010;Greenfield, 1991) and their neural correlates (Farag, Troiani, Bonner, Powers, Avants, Gee and Grossman, 2010;van Schie, Toni and Bekkering, 2006). Allen et al (2010) demonstrated that purposive action sequences are processed in terms of a means-ends parse, which is a formal/abstract specification of how actions are linked together in achieving a goal. Means-ends parses may relate to the syntactic frames that bear the abstract structure of a sequence.…”

How language production shapes language form and comprehension

“…Its effects are evident in recall from long term memory, in which people have a tendency to recall elements in the serial order in which they have frequently occurred in past experience (Miller and Selfridge, 1950). There is also increasing evidence for structured non-linguistic stimuli such as action sequences affecting subsequent production of certain sentence structures, suggesting that the re-use phenomena are not inherently linguistic (Allen et al, 2010; Kaiser, 2012). More broadly, similar Plan Reuse appears in many non-linguistic motor behaviors in humans and animals and is attributed to implicit motor learning.…”