Abstract Structural Representations of Goal-Directed Behavior
Abstract Structural Representations of Goal-Directed Behavior
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DOI：
10.1177/0956797610383434
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发表时间：
2010-10-01
影响因子：
8.2
通讯作者：
Botvinick, Matthew
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Allen, Kachina;Ibara, Steven;Botvinick, Matthew
语言学理论认为，一个句子的结构可以用抽象的句法术语来描述，而不依赖于这个句子所包含的具体词汇。非语言行为，包括目标导向的行为，也被认为具有潜在的结构或“句法”组织。我们建议，有目的的动作序列在认知上以一种手段-目的解析来表示，这是一种关于动作如何组合在一起以实现预期结果的正式规范。为了验证这一理论，我们在两个实验中利用了结构启动现象。正如预测的那样，当描述动作序列的句子与其他具有相同语法的句子一起呈现时，参与者阅读这些句子的速度会更快。第二个实验的结果表明，与观察到的动作序列相关的潜在表征与语言处理没有严格的联系。我们的研究结果表明，目标导向行为的结构可能是抽象的，独立于具体的行动和目标，就像语言语法被认为独立于其他层次的表征一样。
Linguistic theory holds that the structure of a sentence can be described in abstract syntactic terms, independent of the specific words the sentence contains. Nonlinguistic behavior, including goal-directed action, is also theorized to have an underlying structural, or "syntactic," organization. We propose that purposive action sequences are represented cognitively in terms of a means-ends parse, which is a formal specification of how actions fit together to accomplish desired outcomes. To test this theory, we leveraged the phenomenon of structural priming in two experiments. As predicted, participants read sentences describing action sequences faster when these sentences were presented amid other sentences sharing the same parse. Results from a second experiment indicate that the underlying representations relevant to observed action sequences are not strictly tied to language processing. Our results suggest that the structure of goal-directed behavior may be represented abstractly, independently of specific actions and goals, just as linguistic syntax is thought to stand independent of other levels of representation.