The Theory of Event Coding (TEC): A framework for perception and action planning

Abstract

Traditional approaches to human information processing tend to deal with perception and action planning in isolation, so that an adequate account of the perception-action interface is still missing. On the perceptual side, the dominant cognitive view largely underestimates, and thus fails to account for, the impact of action-related processes on both the processing of perceptual information and on perceptual learning. On the action side, most approaches conceive of action planning as a mere continuation of stimulus processing, thus failing to account for the goal-directedness of even the simplest reaction in an experimental task. We propose a new framework for a more adequate theoretical treatment of perception and action planning, in which perceptual contents and action plans are coded in a common representational medium by feature codes with distal reference. Perceived events (perceptions) and to-be-produced events (actions) are equally represented by integrated, task-tuned networks of feature codes – cognitive structures we call event codes. We give an overview of evidence from a wide variety of empirical domains, such as spatial stimulus-response compatibility, sensorimotor synchronization, and ideomotor action, showing that our main assumptions are well supported by the data.

Action experience alters 3-month-old infants' perception of others' actions

“…Sommerville & Woodward, 2005) and are in keeping with research indicating a shared representational basis for self and other actions at both a computational and a neural level (Decety & Sommerville, 2003;Grèzes & Decety, 2001;Hommel et al, 2001;Meltzoff & Decety, 2003). In addition, our findings are consistent with the possibility that actions of self and other are represented amodally from early on, allowing infants to readily recognize the correspondence between their own and other's actions (Meltzoff & Moore, 1977).…”

“…One possibility is that infants learned about the causal effect of the mittens on the toys, and this led them to focus on the relation between the mitten and the toy during the habituation phase, even though this effect was no longer present. This possibility is consistent both with the finding that mature action representations are structured with respect to causal outcomes (Hommel et al, 2001) and with the hypothesis that this is true in infancy (Hauf, Elsner, & Aschersleben, in press;Jovanovic, et al, under review;Kiraly et al, 2003). Action experience may also provide infants with information about the behavioral regularities that typically accompany an actor's goal (e.g.…”

Focusing on body sites: the role of spatial attention in action perception

“…For instance, simply viewing the hand or neck of somebody else increases perceptual sensitivity at the same body site in the viewer (e.g., Tipper et al 1998Tipper et al , 2001). These findings indicate that perception-behavior links are an overarching property of the sensorimotor system and that all stimulus features that can also be features of an individual's own responses are mirrored (Wilson 2001;Hommel et al 2001;Prinz 1990). …”

Fitting objects into holes: On the development of spatial cognition skills.

“…A goal-directed action is always planned (Hommel, Müsseler et al 2001;Umiltà, Kohler et al 2001;von Hofsten 2004). If our actions were not predictive but instead reactive, we would lag behind the events we want to coordinate with (von Hofsten 2004).…”