Perception and action as one: Re-integrating research on human action through event files

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Human Action
• Perception-Action Coupling

Background:

• Stimulus-response and action-effect links are often studied separately across psychological paradigms.
• This separation creates artificial divisions in understanding human action and cognition.
• Contemporary research frequently isolates perception and action, diverging from historical ideomotor theories.

Purpose of the Study:

• To criticize the conceptual separation of stimulus-response and action-effect links.
• To propose a framework for unifying research on human action.
• To highlight the potential of ideomotor approaches in cognitive psychology.

Main Methods:

• Review and critique of existing psychological paradigms concerning stimulus-response and action-effect links.
• Application of the Theory of Event Coding (TEC) as a unifying framework.
• Conceptual analysis of internal representations, specifically 'event files'.

Main Results:

• The separation of stimulus-response and action-effect links is conceptually problematic.
• Ideomotor approaches, particularly TEC, offer a means to integrate these separate research areas.
• Event files provide a mechanism for coding stimulus, response, and effect features, linking perception and action.

Conclusions:

• Unifying stimulus-response and action-effect research through ideomotor principles is feasible and beneficial.
• The concept of event files offers a concrete method for harmonizing diverse fields of human action research.
• Revisiting the original ideomotor perspective can bridge current gaps in understanding perception and action integration.