Topic
Target–action
About: Target–action is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2 publications have been published within this topic receiving 70 citations.
Papers
TL;DR: In 12- and 18-month-old infants who first observed an adult experimenter demonstrating a three-step action sequence on a toy bear, the frequency of the infant’s target action varied depending on which action step elicited the action effect.
Abstract: In adults, the selection and the planning of actions are influenced by the anticipation of desired action effects. However, the role of action effects for action control in infants is still an unresolved issue. One important prerequisite for infants' action control is that infants are able to relate certain movements to certain effects. To test this assumption, it was investigated how infants' action control is affected by action effects. By applying an imitation paradigm, we studied 12- and 18-month-old infants who first observed an adult experimenter demonstrating a three-step action sequence on a toy bear. In three experimental groups, the second action step, the third action step, or no action step elicited an arbitrary sound as an additional acoustic action effect. It was coded how often each of the target actions was performed by the infant in a subsequent 90-s test phase. As predicted, the frequency of the infant's target action varied depending on which action step elicited the action effect. In both age groups, the target action that was combined with an acoustical effect was not only produced more often but also occurred with lower latency and was in most cases the first target action shown by the infants. These results are interpreted as evidence of the important role of action effects in infants' action control.
77 citations
TL;DR: It is argued that the attentional change involves a reduction in the effective salience of the stimulus of the target event, and thus reduces the processing necessary for encoding in memory and the ability of the event to enter into associations.
Abstract: Two experiments made use of a procedure known to generate latent inhibition in human associative learning. Participants received training consisting of exposure to a list of actions performed by a fictitious Mr. X. For most of his actions, an outcome was described, but some were not followed by any outcome. The last action performed by Mr. X was novel for participants in the NOVEL condition. For participants in the EXPOSED condition, Mr. X had performed that target action on repeated occasions, without it producing any outcome. After training, all participants were tested on their ability to retrieve what was the last action performed by Mr. X. In both experiments, retrieval of the target action was poorer in the EXPOSED than in the NOVEL condition. Experiment 2 also included a condition in which the target action was followed by a novel outcome and demonstrated a latent inhibition effect-poorer performance in the EXPOSED condition on a test of the association between the target event and its outcome. These results are interpreted in terms of an attention-reducing mechanism, triggered by the repeated preexposure to the target in the absence of a following event. It is argued that the attentional change involves a reduction in the effective salience of the stimulus of the target event, and thus reduces the processing necessary for encoding in memory and the ability of the event to enter into associations.
Related Topics (5)
Performance Metrics
| Year | Papers |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 1 |
| 2004 | 1 |