Transforming abstract plans into concrete actions

Goodale, Melvyn A.

doi:10.1073/pnas.2020708117

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…The gradient from relatively abstract planning to fairly concrete control suggests that the internal representations guiding these phases might range from more abstract to more concrete, with the latter including a specific response modality (e.g., left hand). Such a view is in line with the most influential current theories on action control, and ample evidence has been provided to support such a distinction (e.g., Ballard et al, 1997;Bridgeman, 1997;Glover, 2004;Goodale, 2020;Hommel et al, 2001;Jeannerod, 1994;Milner & Goodale, 1995;Thomaschke et al, 2012;Woodworth, 1899). However, a closer look shows that the evidence supporting the idea of a transition from amodal planning to modal control is not as clear-cut as is often assumed.…”

Section: Actionsupporting

confidence: 73%

Modal and Amodal Cognition: An Overarching Principle in Various Domains of Psychology

Kaup¹,

Ulrich²,

Bausenhart³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Accounting for how the human mind represents the internal and external world is a crucial feature of many theories of human cognition. Central to this question is the distinction between modal as opposed to amodal representational formats. It has often been assumed that one but not both of these two types of representations underlies processing in specific domains of cognition (e.g., perception, mental imagery, and language). However, in this paper we suggest that both formats play a major role in most cognitive domains. We believe that a comprehensive theory of cognition requires a solid understanding of these representational formats and their functional roles within and across different domains of cognition, the developmental trajectory of these representational formats, and their role in dysfunctional behavior. Here we sketch such an overarching perspective that brings together research from diverse subdisciplines of psychology on modal and amodal representational formats so as to unravel their functional principles and their interactions.

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Section: Actionsupporting

confidence: 73%

Modal and Amodal Cognition: An Overarching Principle in Various Domains of Psychology

Kaup¹,

Ulrich²,

Bausenhart³

et al. 2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The gradient from relatively abstract planning to fairly concrete control suggests that the internal representations guiding these phases might range from more abstract to more concrete, with the latter including a specific response modality (e.g., left hand). Such a view is in line with the most influential current theories on action control, and ample evidence has been provided to support such a distinction (e.g., Ballard et al, 1997 ; Bridgeman et al, 1997 ; Glover, 2004 ; Goodale, 2020 ; Hommel et al, 2001 ; Jeannerod, 1994 ; Milner & Goodale, 1995 ; Thomaschke et al, 2012 ; Woodworth, 1899 ). Even theories that are mainly concerned with the high-level identification and meaning of actions (e.g., Vallacher & Wegner, 1987 , 2012 ) can be subsumed in this framework because they abstract from details of the implementation of the action (like muscle movements) and can therefore be considered to be working at a relatively abstract level—similar to what other theories call the planning stage of the action.…”

Section: Actionsupporting

confidence: 65%

Modal and amodal cognition: an overarching principle in various domains of psychology

Kaup,

Ulrich,

Bausenhart

et al. 2023

Psychological Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Accounting for how the human mind represents the internal and external world is a crucial feature of many theories of human cognition. Central to this question is the distinction between modal as opposed to amodal representational formats. It has often been assumed that one but not both of these two types of representations underlie processing in specific domains of cognition (e.g., perception, mental imagery, and language). However, in this paper, we suggest that both formats play a major role in most cognitive domains. We believe that a comprehensive theory of cognition requires a solid understanding of these representational formats and their functional roles within and across different domains of cognition, the developmental trajectory of these representational formats, and their role in dysfunctional behavior. Here we sketch such an overarching perspective that brings together research from diverse subdisciplines of psychology on modal and amodal representational formats so as to unravel their functional principles and their interactions.

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Motor Equivalence in Motor Awareness

Fasola,

Betka,

Faivre

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Motor awareness (MA) describes the level of conscious access we have to the details of our movements and as such is critical to the feeling of control we maintain over our actions (sense of agency). Although our movements rely on specific sensorimotor transformations as well as distinct reference frames for the active body part, or effector, numerous studies report spatiotemporal thresholds of MA that are comparable across different effectors and tasks as well as supramodal. However, this has not been tested directly and there is currently no direct empirical support for effector-independent MA nor a description of a potentially shared underlying mechanisms. We therefore designed a goal-directed reaching paradigm that participants performed once with their upper-limbs, using a joystick, and once with their full body, by leaning and thereby displacing their center-of-mass. We assessed both MA and corrective movements for sensorimotor mismatches by providing either veridical feedback or introducing random spatial deviations. We hypothesized that changes in motor compensation and awareness, across effectors, with and without a concurrent cognitive load, would follow the same pattern of behavior if they relied on a shared underlying mechanism. Our results lend support for such an effector-independent mechanism, as we observed that MA was comparable across effectors: i) in un-deviated control trials with and without cognitive load, ii) in converging trials where the direction of the deviation corresponded to the direction of the target location, and iii) based on strongly correlated psychometric MA thresholds across effectors. At the same time, data from diverging trials, where the direction of the deviation opposed the direction of the target location, indicate that in case of conflicting information and increased kinematic task demands MA draws on effector-specific sensorimotor information, corresponding to performance differences between hand and full body movements observed in baseline blind-reaching versus visually guided reaching. Overall, our findings provide a direct link between low-level sensorimotor transformations and abstract motor representations and their role in MA, consolidating a gap in conceptual frameworks of the sense of agency.

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Transforming abstract plans into concrete actions

Cited by 4 publications

References 14 publications

Modal and Amodal Cognition: An Overarching Principle in Various Domains of Psychology

Modal and Amodal Cognition: An Overarching Principle in Various Domains of Psychology

Modal and amodal cognition: an overarching principle in various domains of psychology

Motor Equivalence in Motor Awareness

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