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Related Experiment Videos

Variable action effects: response control by context-specific effect anticipations.

Andrea Kiesel1, Joachim Hoffmann

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Würzburg, Röntgenring 11, 97070 Würzburg, Germany. kiesel@psychologie.uni-wuerzburg.de

Psychological Research
|November 5, 2003
PubMed
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The ideomotor principle (IMP) shows that action-effect associations can form even without stable relations. This study demonstrates context-specific learning, where actions are guided by anticipated effects.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Action Control
  • Human Motor Behavior

Background:

  • The ideomotor principle (IMP) posits that voluntary actions are selected based on anticipated sensory effects.
  • Existing evidence for IMP primarily relies on stable, unconditional action-effect mappings.
  • The current research investigates IMP in situations lacking such stable action-effect relations.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To examine whether the ideomotor principle applies to action initiation when action-effect relations are not unconditional.
  • To explore context-specific acquisition of action-effect associations.
  • To determine if different effect anticipations can access the same actions.

Main Methods:

  • Participants performed left and right key presses in two distinct contexts (A and B).

Related Experiment Videos

  • Response selection was based on target position (vertical in A, horizontal in B).
  • Action effects varied in speed (short/fast in A, long/slow in B), with each response producing both effect types equally often within its context.

    • Main Results:

    • Reaction times (RTs) decreased in contexts associated with short effects.
    • RTs increased in contexts associated with long effects.
    • Data indicate that action-effect associations were acquired in a context-specific manner.

    Conclusions:

    • The findings support the context-specific acquisition of action-effect associations.
    • This suggests that the ideomotor principle extends to situations with unstable action-effect mappings.
    • Different anticipated effects can indeed guide the selection of the same motor actions.