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A non‐representational approach to imagined action
Author(s) -
Rooij Iris,
Bongers Raoul M.,
Haselager F.G.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
cognitive science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.498
H-Index - 114
eISSN - 1551-6709
pISSN - 0364-0213
DOI - 10.1207/s15516709cog2603_7
Subject(s) - impossibility , action (physics) , object (grammar) , representation (politics) , task (project management) , cognitive psychology , cognition , psychology , mental representation , computer science , cognitive science , artificial intelligence , physics , quantum mechanics , neuroscience , politics , political science , law , economics , management
This study addresses the dynamical nature of a “representation‐hungry” cognitive task involving an imagined action. In our experiment, participants were handed rods that systematically increased or decreased in length on subsequent trials. Participants were asked to judge whether or not they thought they could reach for a distant object with the hand‐held rod. The results are in agreement with a dynamical model, extended from Tuller, Case, Ding, and Kelso (1994). The dynamical effects observed in this study suggest that predictive judgments regarding the possibility or impossibility of a certain action can be understood in terms of dynamically evolving basins of attraction instead of as depending on representational structures.