Rule encoding by mental simulation

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Wilfried Kunde; Professor Dr. Roland Pfister
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology ; Biological Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 563294521

Rules exert a powerful influence on human behavior, and rule-based behavior is retrieved automatically even if a rule is merely instructed and has never been followed before. How rules achieve such a pervasive impact, however, is poorly understood. The planned project tests the hypothesis that rules become ingrained deeply into the human cognitive system because encoding a rule entails simulating an instance of rule following. Merely understanding a rule thus implies a covert instance of putting this rule into action. This, in turn, forges stimulus-response associations between the rule-related situation and corresponding behavior, which prepares the human cognitive system to retrieve this instance efficiently later on. We will test the mental simulation hypothesis by measuring sub-threshold electromyographic (EMG) activity during rule instruction as well as concurrent electroencephalographic (EEG) signatures of rule processing. Specifically, we probe for higher EMG activity in effectors targeted by a stimulus-response mapping rule as compared to non-targeted effectors as a direct readout of mental simulation. This is supplemented by EEG analyses targeting selective beta band desynchronization over the motor cortex contralateral to an instructed effector. These methods are employed in 10 experiments, five at each of two project sites. The experimental protocol elaborates on a novel study design that we have tested in extensive pilot work. In addition to establishing mental simulation as a key mechanism that ingrains a rule into the human cognitive system, these experiments provide state-of-the art behavioral measures of rule retrieval to assess behavioral consequences of rule encoding. They further target the role of mental simulation in deliberate rule breaking, assess the specificity of mental simulation, and probe for possible boundary conditions of this mechanism. Together, this work programme will thus provide a unique, mechanistic, and testable approach to the ubiquitous process of rule encoding and retrieval.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants