Embodied Choice: How Action Influences Perceptual Decision Making

Abstract

Embodied Choice considers action performance as a proper part of the decision making process rather than merely as a means to report the decision. The central statement of embodied choice is the existence of bidirectional influences between action and decisions. This implies that for a decision expressed by an action, the action dynamics and its constraints (e.g. current trajectory and kinematics) influence the decision making process. Here we use a perceptual decision making task to compare three types of model: a serial decision-then-action model, a parallel decision-and-action model, and an embodied choice model where the action feeds back into the decision making. The embodied model incorporates two key mechanisms that together are lacking in the other models: action preparation and commitment. First, action preparation strategies alleviate delays in enacting a choice but also modify decision termination. Second, action dynamics change the prospects and create a commitment effect to the initially preferred choice. Our results show that these two mechanisms make embodied choice models better suited to combine decision and action appropriately to achieve suitably fast and accurate responses, as usually required in ecologically valid situations. Moreover, embodied choice models with these mechanisms give a better account of trajectory tracking experiments during decision making. In conclusion, the embodied choice framework offers a combined theory of decision and action that gives a clear case that embodied phenomena such as the dynamics of actions can have a causal influence on central cognition.

Model-Based Approaches to Active Perception and Control

“…It is also worth noting that the importance of action for cognition is exemplified in many more domains than discussed in this paper. For example, there are important demonstrations that action dynamics are required to stabilize perceptual learning [148] and sequence learning [149] and that action should be considered as part and parcel of decision processes-for example, decision-makers consider both rewards and action costs jointly, and action dynamics feed back on decisions [45,50], and one can offload decisions to one's own behaviour [83,150]. All of these examples, and other, suggest that action is part of cognitive processing and not just a consequence of it [53].…”

“…Neurobiological implementations of this idea, such as the "affordance competition" hypothesis [16,42,43] and the "intentional" framework of information processing [44] have received considerable empirical support. These ideas can be stretched even further, by considering that the serial stage idea is intrinsically flawed due to the backward influence from action to decision processes, leading to an "embodied choice" framework [45].…”

Interactional leader–follower sensorimotor communication strategies during repetitive joint actions

“…In active inference, costs (and value functions) are absorbed in the (Bayesian) priors or the desired states of the environment that an agent tries to achieve through action [61]. Importantly, these costs can be of various kinds, from movement error to motor effort (which often interact, [62]). Here, in its most simplified form, we can define as 'cost' any violation of stereotypical movement patterns (e.g.…”

Moving forward in perceptual decision making

“…However, there is also evidence to support the view that different processes of perceptual decision making might happen in parallel (2,11). According to this view, the brain is processing sensory information to specify, in parallel, several potential actions that are currently available, and actions can, in turn, feed back into the perceptual decision-making process (11,12). In light of these considerations, the findings reported in the study by Rahnev et al (1) may not provide unequivocal evidence for a hierarchical or serial organization of the processes underlying perceptual decision making.…”