How We Do What We Want: A Neuro‐Cognitive Perspective on Human Action Planning

Abstract

Humans perform actions to reach particular goals, that is, to intentionally create or modify personally relevant events-we move our eyes to learn more about a novel event, reach for a cup to quench our thirst, and move our lips to share our thoughts with someone else. Accordingly, even primitive actions must involve some kind of planning, some sort of anticipatory control. Indeed, there are at least three defining features that the simplest behavioral acts share with more complex ones. First, all of them are planned in terms of anticipated goal events. In particular, the first step of action planning consists in specifying the features the action is intended to possess; this is achieved by activating the appropriate action-effect codes, i.e., sensory-motor assemblies controlling the production of those features. Action-effect codes emerge through the perception of movement-effect contingencies, and they are acquired from the first months in life on. Besides action planning they are involved in the perception of both one's own actions and actions of others. Second, selected features of an intended action need to be integrated into a coherent, durable action plan, which is achieved by temporarily "binding" distributed feature codes. Third, planning an action turns the cognitive system into a kind of reflex machinery, which facilitates the proper execution of the plan under appropriate circumstances. This involves the implementation of automatic stimulus-response associations and the increase of the salience of action-related situational information, thereby delegating action control to the environment.Neuro-cognition of action planning -3

Age differences in the perception of hierarchical structure in events

“…In particular, attending to coarse level segmentation may help engage relevant knowledge structures (Zacks, 2004; Zacks, Kumar, Abrams, Mehta, 2009), which may in turn help activate the right information at the right time. Knowledge structures about events have been shown to play a major role in action planning (Grafman, 1995; Hommel, 2006) and memory for events (Abelson, 1981; Bower, Black & Turner, 1979), and to allow for effective understanding and memory in older adults (Radvansky & Dijkstra, 2007). Knowledge structures for events prominently represent information about actors’ goals and their relations, which is related to the part-subpart structure of activity.…”

Twin Peaks: An ERP Study of Action Planning and Control in Coacting Individuals

“…Action planning comprises the preparation and implementation of goaldirected movements (see Hommel, 2006). It is facilitated when a representation of the action to be performed is already activated through perception (e.g., when one observes another person performing the action one is about to carry out).…”

Segmentation in reading and film comprehension.

“…Such events have specific structures and involve particular objects, characters, and goals. Knowledge about the structure of events is essential for one to function in the world and is used to fill in missing information, predict what is going to happen in the future, and plan actions (Abelson, 1981;Grafman, 1995;Hommel, 2006;. These event schemata (also referred to as scripts or structured event complexes) provide a framework for incoming information, such that the active representation of the current event (the event model) is made up of information about the current state of the world, as well as information about similar, previously encountered states (Zacks, Speer, Swallow, Braver, & Reynolds, 2007).…”