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dc.contributor.supervisorMitchell, Christopher
dc.contributor.authorColton, James
dc.contributor.otherFaculty of Healthen_US
dc.date.accessioned2019-07-15T12:15:40Z
dc.date.issued2019
dc.identifier10420408en_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/14644
dc.descriptionChapter 2 is based on Colton, Bach, Whalley and Mitchell (2018a), “ Intention insertion: activating an action’s perceptual consequences is sufficient to induce non-willed motor behaviour”, published in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. As part of this publication, all data, materials and an R script which reproduces the analyses and plots in Experiment 3 (i.e. the main experiment in the published article) were made available online with the Open Science Framework (Colton, Bach, Whalley, & Mitchell, 2018b). Each experiment in the forthcoming chapter uses this same analytical approach. In addition, articles based on the experiments presented in Chapters 3, 4 and 5 are in preparation for publication.en_US
dc.description.abstract

It feels intuitive that our actions are intentional, but there is considerable debate about whether (and how) humans control their behaviour. Ideomotor models of action argue that action intentions have a fundamentally perceptual format. In these views, actions are not only controlled by anticipating – imagining – their intended perceptual consequences but are also initiated when this “action effect” activation is sufficiently strong. Yet, this latter initiating function of action effect activation has not yet been tested directly.

In Experiments 1-4, participants mentally rehearsed a movement sequence and were unexpectedly presented with salient visual cues that were either compatible or incompatible with their currently imagined action. As predicted, the combined activity from imagery and perception was sufficient to trigger non-willed action slips, even when participants were asked to withhold responses. The experiments provided the first direct evidence that forming an action intention may involve nothing more than evoking a strong enough mental image of the perceptual effect one wishes to achieve until a motor threshold is reached and the corresponding action is initiated. Experiments 5-6 showed that anticipated action effects attain this initiating role when they are treated as potential future goal states, rather than the current state of the sensorimotor system. Finally, Experiment 7 provided evidence that the tendency to produce action slips is positively associated with individual differences in ideomotor suggestibility.

These findings reveal how people are able to interact so effortlessly with the world by specifying lightly constraining action goals which mediate the translation of sensory input into motor output - allowing the environment to trigger actions which correspond with the goal. In addition, these findings suggest that action slips are a product of the same processes that guide voluntary actions. That is, perceptual input can co-opt endogenously activated action effects (e.g. via imagery) and, sometimes, trigger inappropriate behaviour.

en_US
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherUniversity of Plymouth
dc.rightsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States*
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/*
dc.subjectAction Intentionsen_US
dc.subjectMotor Controlen_US
dc.subjectIdeomotoren_US
dc.subjectVolitionen_US
dc.subjectAction Initiationen_US
dc.subject.classificationPhDen_US
dc.titleAction Intentions and the Puzzle of Non-Willed Behaviouren_US
dc.typeThesis
plymouth.versionpublishableen_US
dc.identifier.doihttp://dx.doi.org/10.24382/814
dc.rights.embargodate2020-07-15T12:15:40Z
dc.rights.embargoperiod12 monthsen_US
dc.type.qualificationDoctorateen_US
rioxxterms.versionNA


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