[From Bruce Abbott (2016.09.24.0900 EDT)]
Congratulations, Warren! I followed the link to the winter-school 2017 site
and was surprised to find it referencing a different literature than the one
I am familiar with on motor control. According to the announcement:
"The selection of topics was guided by two dominating theories in the
fields: (1) The Theory of Event Coding (TEC; Hommel, M�sseler, Aschersleben
& Prinz, 2001) and (2) the Perception-Action Model (PAM; Milner & Goodale,
1995) about the function of the ventral and the dorsal pathway of visual
information processing."
I took a quick look at the abstracts of the cited papers and a more recent
one by Hommel (2009). According to the latter,
"The theory of event coding (TEC) is a general framework explaining how
perceived and produced events (stimuli and responses) are cognitively
represented and how their representations interact to generate perception
and action."
And
"If actions are cognitively represented by codes of their perceptual
consequences, one may ask whether representations
of perceived events and of produced actions differ at all. TEC makes the
strong claim that they do not."
As I have not yet read Hommel (2009) beyond the first page or so, I am in
danger of misrepresenting the theory of event coding, but on the surface at
least, it does seem to bear some relation to PCT. After all, in PCT, the
actions of a control system are closely tied to their consequences for the
controlled perception. However, in PCT these actions are not seen as being
"cognitively represented by their perceptual consequences." Instead,
actions and consequences are simply connected to form part of the control
loop. PCT simply recognizes the existence of control systems and holds that
the required linkages may be created through the process of reorganization.
TEC and PCT seem to be designed to address different questions. PCT assumes
that actions are products of control-system operation with the function of
bringing the controlled perception close to its reference level despite the
effects of disturbances and changes in reference level. PCT asks what
perceptions are under control, under what circumstances, and how the
relevant control systems are organized within the nervous system. TEC asks
how, given an action, we "know" its likely perceptual consequences. TEC's
answer is that actions and their perceptual consequences are "encoded" by a
common representation.
I don't know that TEC and PCT are necessarily incompatible, although Bill
Powers rejected the idea that the nervous system operates by "encoding" and
"decoding" messages. An area where PCT needs further development has to do
with the question of what happens to control systems when they are not in
use. I am not currently using the control system that involves turning the
steering wheel on my car in order to keep the car going where I want it to
go. Bill suggested that perhaps the references were set to a value that
would keep that output deactivated, but it seems more likely to me that such
systems, having been learned, can be brought into being or dismissed by
activating/deactivating associative linkages among the control-system
components. Supporters of TEC might suggest, I suppose, that experience
teaches what actions produce what perceptual effects, forming an
action-perception unit represented by a common code. This unitization would
make it relatively easy to establish control over the perception as it is
already associatively linked to actions by means of which control can be
exerted.
Given that I really don't know much about TEC, please take these musings as
pure speculation. The main things I want to communicate are (1) the Winter
School's focus seems to be more on how actions relate to perceptions than on
traditional motor control issues, and (2) the action-perception folks may
appreciate learning how the linkage between action and perception allows the
perceptions so linked to be controlled.
Bruce
···
-----Original Message-----
From: Warren Mansell [mailto:wmansell@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, September 24, 2016 12:04 AM
To: <csgnet@lists.illinois.edu> <csgnet@lists.illinois.edu>
Cc: Henry Yin <hy43@duke.edu>; Prof. Roger K. Moore
<r.k.moore@sheffield.ac.uk>; Shaktee S <shaktee120@gmail.com>; Carla Brown
<carlabrownojeda@hotmail.co.uk>; Andrew Healey
<andrew.healey-2@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk>; Andrew willett
<anwillett@vassar.edu>; Vyv Huddy <v.huddy@ucl.ac.uk>
Subject: Winter School 2017 "Human Action Control"
Bit of a coup, I have myself down as an invited speaker at an international
motor control conference in Germany. I think I am assumed to be a 'clinical'
speaker, so they are in for a bit of a surprise... Any tips on how to hold
my own with this bunch?
I am hoping to do an overview of work conducted by my undergraduate, masters
and PhD students as well as a series of studies on the rubber band demo...
If you have a PhD student presenting any (PCT) work, it could be a good
opportunity for them...
Warren
http://www.pi.uni-tuebingen.de/arbeitsbereiche/kognition-und-handlung/events
/winter-school-2017-human-action-control.html