Hands in Thought and Motion
- Johannes Lohmann, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
- Martin Butz, Computer Science; Psychology, Faculty of Science, University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany
AbstractTheories of event-predictive, anticipatory behavior control suggest that complex action planning and control is segmented into sequences of anticipated subgoals and according behavioral events, which accomplish the subgoals. Here we focus on the cognitive dynamics during successive subgoal activations. We combined a virtual object interaction task (prehension and transport of a bottle) with a crossmodal congruency task. Anticipatory crossmodal congruency effects (aCCEs) occur at the goal of the current behavior, before the goal is reached. These aCCEs appear to be stronger during prehension, while visual distractors at the currently irrelevant movement target have no effect. While the results so far provide only partial support for the proposed anticipatory, sequential control process, the paradigm is well-suited to probe the dynamic changes of spatial body representations in object interactions.