Interdisciplinary studies of decision-making and motor planning

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Most psychological theories are aimed at understanding advanced aspects of human cognition. For example, studies of decision-making usually address how we make abstract choices such as selecting a career or buying a house. These often lead to theories suggesting that decisions are made within a cognitive system prior to being transmitted to the motor systems for executing the required movements – a serial architecture of sensing, thinking, and then acting. However, the human brain is the product of a long history of evolution, and during most of that history, animals were faced with challenges very different from those of abstract decision tasks. In particular, most decisions in animal life are made in a real-time, dynamically changing environment that does not allow time for careful deliberation followed by action planning. I have proposed that for effective behavior in such dynamic situations, the brain uses a parallel architecture in which multiple potential actions can be specified simultaneously, one selected on the basis of current sensory information, and even during its execution other options remain under consideration in case circumstances suddenly change. This is called the “affordance competition hypothesis”.