Losing the Boundary: Cognition Biases Action Well After Action Selection.

For selecting an action, traditional theories suggest a cognitive architecture made of serial processing units. Others suggested that action selection emerges from the parallel implementation of and competition between multiple action plans. To disentangle these 2 hypotheses, we created a reaching t...

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Published in:Journal of Experimental Psychology. General Vol. 144; no. 4; pp. 737 - 744
Main Authors: Calderon, Cristian Buc, Verguts, Tom, Gevers, Wim
Format: Article
Published: American Psychological Association Aug2015
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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      dt: Aug2015
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      pub: American Psychological Association
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        10.1037/xge0000087
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        atl: Losing the Boundary: Cognition Biases Action Well After Action Selection.
      aug:
        au:
          Calderon, Cristian Buc
          Verguts, Tom
          Gevers, Wim
        affil:
          Université Libre de Bruxelles
          Ghent University
      su:
        Cognition
        Competition (Psychology)
        Boundary value problems
        Computer architecture
        Probability theory
      sug:
        subj:
          Cognition
          Competition (Psychology)
          Boundary value problems
          Computer architecture
          Probability theory
      keyword:
        action selection
        decision making
        movement planning
        parallel processing
        reaching
        action selection
        decision making
        movement planning
        parallel processing
        reaching
      ab: For selecting an action, traditional theories suggest a cognitive architecture made of serial processing units. Others suggested that action selection emerges from the parallel implementation of and competition between multiple action plans. To disentangle these 2 hypotheses, we created a reaching task assessing the temporal dynamics of action selection. Crucially, our design did not force action selection processes to operate in parallel, allowing an informative comparison between the hypotheses. We manipulated the probability of congruence between a cue and a delayed reach target to investigate, in an unbiased way, whether congruence probability interacts with reach trajectory. Our results show that reach trajectories are modulated by the probability of congruence. Hence, action selection is temporally spread, continues after movement onset, and emerges from a competition between multiple afforded action plans, in parallel biased by relevant task factors (e.g„ probability of reach).
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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