Knowledge-based control of cognition and action

识别或作用于对象通常发生在考虑多个目标对象或动作意图的上下文中。例如，当你在早餐时拿起一杯咖啡时，你可能会面对一张餐桌，餐桌上还放着一杯橙汁、一片烤面包和一碗带勺子的麦片，所有这些都会招致与抓住杯子垂直手柄截然不同的动作。仅仅是在视野中看到这些可供选择的目标物体，或者最近与它们互动，就有可能让人想起它们相关手部动作的心理表征。这些无关的动作表征可能会与预期动作相竞争，减缓伸展和抓握反应，甚至修改动作的细节，导致不完美的抓握，或者可能导致导致令人不快的事故的笨拙动作。测量猴子运动前皮质单细胞活动的神经生理学实验表明，灵长类动物能够同时代表多种行动意图并在其中进行选择，就像这个假设的早餐餐桌情景所表明的那样。这项建议中描述的研究考察了当人类成功地解决在复杂环境中甚至在语言理解等智力任务中可能出现的动作表征之间的潜在冲突时所涉及的基本心理过程。*我计划检验一系列任务情景中相互竞争的动作表征之间的互动，包括物体识别、进行伸展和抓取动作，以及理解描述应用于可操纵物体的动作的句子。通过测量做出一个动作所需的时间，或者用来阅读描述一个动作的句子的眼动模式，或者是一只手在执行伸展和抓取动作时所做的详细动作，我将能够得出结论，即当一个人看到一个物体或理解一个句子时，会唤起哪些类型的动作表征，以及这些表征之间的竞争是如何解决的，从而允许正确的任务表现或导致成绩错误。*--这项研究将提供关于概念性知识和动作表征如何支持熟练表现的重要信息。它还将有助于更深入地理解在执行手动动作和识别通常由局部性脑损伤或神经退化引起的对象时的选择性损伤。**

Identifying or acting on objects often occurs in contexts where multiple target objects or action intentions are being considered. For example, when reaching for a mug of coffee during breakfast, one might be faced with a dining table that also holds a glass of orange juice, a piece of toast on a plate, and a bowl of cereal with a spoon, all of which invite actions quite different from grasping the vertical handle of a mug. Simply having these alternative target objects in view, or having recently interacted with them, has the potential to bring to mind a mental representation of their associated hand actions. These extraneous action representations may then compete with the intended action, slowing the reach and grasp response, or even modifying details of the movement, leading to an imperfect grasp or possibly a clumsy action that results in an unpleasant accident. Neurophysiological experiments measuring single-cell activity in the pre-motor cortex of monkeys shows that primates are capable of representing multiple action intentions simultaneously and of selecting among them, just as suggested by this hypothetical breakfast table scenario. The research described in this proposal examines the basic mental processes that are involved when humans successfully resolve potential conflicts between action representations that can arise in complex environments or even in intellectual tasks such as language comprehension.***     I plan to examine interactions between competing action representations in a range of task situations, including object identification, making reach and grasp actions, and understanding sentences that describe actions applied to manipulable objects. By measuring the time taken to make an action, or the pattern of eye movements used to read a sentence describing an action, or the detailed movement a hand makes as it executes a reach and grasp action, I will be able to form conclusions about the kinds of action representations that are evoked when someone views an object or understands a sentence, and about how competition between those representations is either resolved to allow correct task performance or results in a performance error.***     This research will provide important information about how conceptual knowledge and action representations support skilled performance. It will also contribute to a deeper understanding of the selective impairments in performing manual actions and identifying objects that often result from localized brain damage or neural degeneration.**