Planning and Representing Intentional Action

This paper reviews recent approaches to human action planning and the cognitive representation of intentional actions. Evidence suggests that action planning takes place in terms of anticipated features of the intended goal, that is, in terms of action effects. These effects are acquired from early...

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Main Author: Bernhard Hommel
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2003-01-01
Series:The Scientific World Journal
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1100/tsw.2003.46
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author Bernhard Hommel
author_facet Bernhard Hommel
author_sort Bernhard Hommel
collection DOAJ
description This paper reviews recent approaches to human action planning and the cognitive representation of intentional actions. Evidence suggests that action planning takes place in terms of anticipated features of the intended goal, that is, in terms of action effects. These effects are acquired from early infancy on by registering contingencies between movements and perceptual movement outcomes. Co-occurrence of movements and effects leads to the creation of bidirectional associations between the underlying internal codes, thus establishing distributed perception-action networks subserving both perceiving external events and intentionally producing them. Action plans determine only the general, goal-relevant features of intended actions, while the fine-tuning is left to on-line sensory-motor processing. Action plans emerge from competition for action control between several factors: overlearned habits, perceptual events, and emotional influences, among others. Accordingly, action control represents a balance between personal intentions and wishes on the one hand and environmental affordances and demands on the other.
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spelling doaj-art-d994d3ed8668455eac8d7337092f35392025-08-20T02:21:13ZengWileyThe Scientific World Journal1537-744X2003-01-01359360810.1100/tsw.2003.46Planning and Representing Intentional ActionBernhard Hommel0Department of Psychology, Leiden University, Wassenaarseweg 52, NL-2333 XZ Leiden, The NetherlandsThis paper reviews recent approaches to human action planning and the cognitive representation of intentional actions. Evidence suggests that action planning takes place in terms of anticipated features of the intended goal, that is, in terms of action effects. These effects are acquired from early infancy on by registering contingencies between movements and perceptual movement outcomes. Co-occurrence of movements and effects leads to the creation of bidirectional associations between the underlying internal codes, thus establishing distributed perception-action networks subserving both perceiving external events and intentionally producing them. Action plans determine only the general, goal-relevant features of intended actions, while the fine-tuning is left to on-line sensory-motor processing. Action plans emerge from competition for action control between several factors: overlearned habits, perceptual events, and emotional influences, among others. Accordingly, action control represents a balance between personal intentions and wishes on the one hand and environmental affordances and demands on the other.http://dx.doi.org/10.1100/tsw.2003.46
spellingShingle Bernhard Hommel
Planning and Representing Intentional Action
The Scientific World Journal
title Planning and Representing Intentional Action
title_full Planning and Representing Intentional Action
title_fullStr Planning and Representing Intentional Action
title_full_unstemmed Planning and Representing Intentional Action
title_short Planning and Representing Intentional Action
title_sort planning and representing intentional action
url http://dx.doi.org/10.1100/tsw.2003.46
work_keys_str_mv AT bernhardhommel planningandrepresentingintentionalaction