The Muddle of Anticipation

Abstract

In J. J. Gibson's classic paper "The Problem of Temporal Order in Stimulation and Perception" (1966a), he referred to the difficulties encountered when attempting a sharp distinction between memory and perception as "the muddle of memory." Resolution of the muddle by J. J. Gibson proceeded by blurring the distinction itself. We develop the conjugate "muddle of anticipation" similarly by blurring the sharp distinction traditionally drawn between anticipation and perception. The subsequent redefinition of the problem is grounded in strong anticipation equated with anticipating synchronization-that which arises from a system itself via lawful regularities embedded in the system's ordinary mode of function. We identify the fit of strong anticipation's properties to J. J. Gibson's ecological approach and in so doing introduce the possibility of a potentially deep connection between them, namely, that the coordination of perception with surroundings (direct perception) is a special case of strong anticipation. TWO MUDDLESJ. J. Gibson (1966a) wrote about the "muddle of memory," referring to the difficulty of defining memory in any way other than through introspection, which

Model-Based Approaches to Active Perception and Control

“…At the same time, model-based and inferential approaches emphasize the neuronal instantiation of internal generative models and explicit predictive processes that mediate adaptive control loops-an idea that is becoming increasingly influential in theoretical neuroscience [18] and (sometimes under the label of "predictive processing") in philosophy [100]. These assumptions are not easy to reconcile with some enactive theories, which emphasize coupling rather than internal modelling [4,13] or which focus on implicit processes of anticipatory synchronization rather than explicit prediction [151]. While the conceptual and empirical scrutiny of these and alternative proposals continues, we hope we have contributed to shed light on the most significant differences between competing approaches-those that are worth subjecting to (active) hypothesis testing.…”

Homing in on consciousness in the nervous system: An action-based synthesis

“…Many of these involve moving the entire body in complicated ways (e.g., a gymnast engaged in a floor routine). Another set enables us to extend our behaviors into nonlocal environments (cognitive maps; Tolman 1948) that allow for planning whole body movements to places beyond the range of direct perception (though see Stepp & Turvey [2015] and Turvey [2015] for alternatives).…”

Staying Together: A Bidirectional Delay–Coupled Approach to Joint Action

“…Human behaviors such as conversational speech and ensemble music demonstrate fine‐grained temporal coordination between individuals, during which they anticipate and adapt to each other (Repp & Su, ). Coupled nonlinear dynamical systems provide a possible physical mechanism for how this occurs (Haken et al, ; Stepp, ; Stepp & Turvey, , ). Ensemble music performance is an ideal domain for examining the mechanisms of coordination between individuals (Demos et al, ; Goebl & Palmer, ; Wing et al, ).…”

“…This anticipatory behavior is a type of strong anticipation (Dubois, 2002;Stepp & Turvey, 2010;Washburn et al, 2017) in which the driven system's anticipation is derived by comparing its time-delayed self-feedback, which is partly driven by the master (driver) system, with instantaneous feedback from the driver's system. This differs from cognitivist approaches which adopt a weak anticipation perspective (Dubois, 2002;Stepp & Turvey, 2015), in which anticipation is based on an internal model of the environment (van der Steen & Keller, 2013). While strong anticipation has been modeled with delay-coupled oscillator models (Stepp & Turvey, 2010;Voss, 2000Voss, , 2001, weak anticipation has been implemented in linear regression equations for phase and period error correction (van der Steen & Keller, 2013;Vorberg & Schulze, 2002;Vorberg & Wing, 1996;Wing et al, 2014).…”