Blick in die Zukunft: Antizipative Sakkaden zeigen Grundlagen der menschlichen Handlungskontrolle
Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse
Our actions often yield predictable outcomes in our environment. Based on prior learning experiences, we do not only select appropriate actions to achieve desired effects, but also anticipatorily move our eyes towards the anticipated locations of our actions‘ future effects. I argue that such spontaneous anticipatory saccades in goal-directed action control reflect a proactive effect monitoring process that prepares a subsequent comparison of expected and actual effect and corresponding adaptations. In this project, I demonstrated that such anticipatory saccades are indeed based on learned action-effect associations (as compared to other possibilities) and emerge in various settings as long as an effect can be anticipated based on the action we are planning. Importantly, not only the vague direction of the future effect but its exact location/distance as well as its timing become associated with our actions and are anticipated. That is, anticipatory saccades occur earlier/later and are shorter/longer based on a future effect’s delay and distance. This demonstrates that such anticipatory saccades indeed reflect a proactive effect monitoring processes that effectively adapts proactive shifts of attention such that the conditions for perceiving future effects are optimal. Moreover, effect-generating actions and anticipatory saccades interact. The timing of actions and anticipatory saccades is flexibly scheduled based on temporal task constraints like the time left to move one’s eyes after responding. Similarly, whether an anticipatory saccades has already emerged or not influences the success of stopping/switching effect-generating actions and, conversely, anticipatory saccades adapt to our success in stopping/switching an action. This points towards a highly adaptive interplay of action selection and proactive effect monitoring in goal-directed action control. Apart from theoretical insights, the present project also established the ideal conditions for assessing anticipatory saccades as indicators of outcome expectations. This opens up the potential of using anticipatory saccades to assess human outcome expectations in applied, for instance, human-technology interaction, settings in the future.
Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)
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The origins and consequences of monitoring processes in human action control. Symposium at the Conference of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology (ESCoP) 2019
Pfeuffer, C. U.
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Visual attention´s three guides. Symposium at the Tagung experimentell arbeitender Psychologen (TeaP) 2019
Pfeuffer, C. U. & Goller, F.
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Only time will tell the future: Anticipatory saccades reveal the temporal dynamics of time-based location and task expectancy.. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 46(10), 1183-1200.
Pfeuffer, Christina U.; Aufschnaiter, Stefanie; Thomaschke, Roland & Kiesel, Andrea
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Being Flexible about the Future: Monitoring the Outcomes of (Un)Successfully Stopped and Switched Actions. Paper presented at the Virtual Annual Meeting of the Psychonomics Society, USA
Pfeuffer, C. U., Huestegge, L. & Kiesel, A.
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Similar proactive effect monitoring in free and forced choice action modes. Psychological Research, 87(1), 226-241.
Pfeuffer, Christina U.; Kiesel, Andrea & Huestegge, Lynn
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Anticipatory Saccades Towards the Future Consequences of One’s Actions – an Online Eye Tracking Study. Journal of Cognition, 6(1).
Gouret, Florian & Pfeuffer, Christina U.
