Factors that affect action possibility judgements: Recent experience with the action and the current body state

Abstract

It has been suggested that action possibility judgements are formed through a covert simulation of the to-be-executed action. We sought to determine whether the motor system (via a common coding mechanism) influences this simulation, by investigating whether action possibility judgements are influenced by experience with the movement task (Experiments 1 and 2) and current body states (Experiment 3). The judgement task in each experiment involved judging whether it was possible for a person's hand to accurately move between two targets at presented speeds. In Experiment 1, participants completed the action judgements before and after executing the movement they were required to judge. Results were that judged movement times after execution were closer to the actual execution time than those prior to execution. The results of Experiment 2 suggest that the effects of execution on judgements were not due to motor activation or perceptual task experience-alternative explanations of the execution-mediated judgement effects. Experiment 3 examined how judged movement times were influenced by participants wearing weights. Results revealed that wearing weights increased judged movement times. These results suggest that the simulation underlying the judgement process is connected to the motor system, and that simulations are dynamically generated, taking into account recent experience and current body state.

Action Possibility Judgments of People with Varying Motor Abilities Due to Spinal Cord Injury

“…As discussed in the Introduction, it has been suggested that a simulation of the individuals' own movement performance likely forms the core of the action possibility judgment process [1], [2], [8]. The data reported here and elsewhere (e.g., [5]) suggest that this simulation is not the sole process, otherwise such context- and/or person-dependent adaptations would not be observed.…”

“…Likewise, it is also important to predict whether another person, with different characteristics and abilities, can perform a task before engaging in joint motor action (e.g., imagine passing the heavy object to a child). Recent studies [1] , [2] examining such action possibility judgments have indicated that the core of these judgments is a simulation process that utilizes linked action and perception networks (see [3] and [4] for in-depth discussions of possible mechanisms). Specifically, it has been proposed that when an individual is asked to make judgments about their own actions or the actions of another person, the individual first simulates the to-be-judged action.…”

“Two Minds Don’t Blink Alike”: The Attentional Blink Does Not Occur in a Joint Context

“…The first observation is that completing the individual task before the joint task did not affect the emergence of the joint attentional blink. Completing the individual task first could have increased the potential for a joint attentional blink because recent work suggests that experience with a movement task increases the accuracy of action perception (e.g., Chandrasekharan et al, 2012 ; Wong et al, 2013 ), increases the responsiveness of cortical areas activated during action observation ( Calvo-Merino et al, 2005 ; Catmur et al, 2007 ), and affects the manner in which a co-actor adapts their actions for their partner ( Ray et al, 2017 ). Previous experience is thought to have these effects because performance of the task (generating the action and sensing and perceiving the outcomes of the action) establishes, refines, and/or strengthens the coupling between the representations of the action and the perceptual consequences of those actions ( Prinz, 1992 ; Hommel et al, 2001 ; Kunde, 2001 ; Elsner and Hommel, 2004 ; Gozli et al, 2016 ).…”

“…Second, because each participant completed the individual task in between the two joint tasks, the individual task provided one-half of the participants with task experience prior to the critical joint task in which they identified T2 after their partner identified T1. Research has revealed that recent task experience can modulate the perception and imagination of action (e.g., Chandrasekharan et al, 2012 ; Wong et al, 2013 ) – two processes thought to involve action simulation. It is likely that task performance enhances these processes because experience strengthens the representations of the action and perceptual codes associated with the task, and leads to increased knowledge of the task and response conditions.…”

Recombinant Enaction: Manipulatives Generate New Procedures in the Imagination, by Extending and Recombining Action Spaces

“…In this process, traces of the actions done on the manipulative are stored, and these traces are activated in imagination during problem‐solving. At the mechanism level, this priming process, where execution of an action primes imagination of another similar action (Chandrasekharan, Binsted, Ayres, Higgins, & Welsh, ), is supported by the common coding mechanism, as it connects execution and imagination of movements.…”