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No anticipation–no action: the role of anticipation in action and perception

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Abstract

This paper reviews psychophysical evidence for the existence and the nature of two types of anticipation in goal-oriented action. The first one relates to attained changes of the perceptual world, thus to action goals. These anticipations determine appropriate motor output. We argue that goal codes do not only serve as a reference unit, against which currently produced behavioral effects are compared. Rather voluntary actions appear to be planned literally in terms of intended behavioral effects. The second type of anticipation relates to the environmental conditions that have to be met to bring an intended effect into being. These anticipations serve to trigger selected actions, when appropriate execution conditions are encountered. Altogether, the behavioral evidence portrays a remarkable automaticity of goal-oriented action. Once a goal exists (wherever it might come from), corresponding efferent output is generated and executed under appropriate conditions.

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Notes

  1. Imitation has also been reported when observed and imitated movements cannot be directly linked via the same perceptual channel. For example, newborns imitate the seen facial expressions of adults, although the babies have not acquired a visual representation of their own facial expressions (Meltzoff and Moore 1977). This has been explained by the assumption of inborn supramodal representations of certain actions’ consequences (cf. Heyes 2001 for further discussion of this issue).

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Acknowledgments

We thank Michael Ziessler for the helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. This work was supported by a grant of the German Research Foundation (DFG) KU 1964.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Martin-Luther-University of Halle-Wittenberg, 06099, Halle (Saale), Germany

    Wilfried Kunde & Katrin Elsner

  2. Department of Psychology, Julius-Maximilians-University, Roentgenring 11, 97070, Wuerzburg, Germany

    Andrea Kiesel

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  1. Wilfried Kunde
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  2. Katrin Elsner
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  3. Andrea Kiesel
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Correspondence to Wilfried Kunde.

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Kunde, W., Elsner, K. & Kiesel, A. No anticipation–no action: the role of anticipation in action and perception. Cogn Process 8, 71–78 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-007-0162-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-007-0162-2

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