Selecting When Acting: How Human Perception Is Tuned to Action Goals and How Robotics Can Benefit from That

This paper reviews theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence speaking in favor of a close link between action control and perceptual selection in humans. Results from behavioural studies, neuro-imaging, human electrophysiology as well as single-cell studies in monkeys are described. These data as well as theories are brought forward to argue that close connection between action and perception should be considered in designs of artificial systems. Examples of such systems are described and the application of those approaches to robotics is stressed.

[1]  G. Aschersleben,et al.  The Theory of Event Coding (TEC): a framework for perception and action planning. , 2001, The Behavioral and brain sciences.

[2]  K. Dautenhahn,et al.  Imitation in Animals and Artifacts , 2002 .

[3]  H. Deubel,et al.  Saccade target selection and object recognition: Evidence for a common attentional mechanism , 1996, Vision Research.

[4]  R. Desimone,et al.  Selective attention gates visual processing in the extrastriate cortex. , 1985, Science.

[5]  G. Rizzolatti,et al.  Action for perception: a motor-visual attentional effect. , 1999 .

[6]  R. Desimone,et al.  Neural mechanisms of selective visual attention. , 1995, Annual review of neuroscience.

[7]  Maja J. Matarić,et al.  Sensory-motor primitives as a basis for imitation: linking perception to action and biology to robotics , 2002 .

[8]  Bernhard Hommel,et al.  Codes and their vicissitudes , 2001 .

[9]  G. Rizzolatti,et al.  I Know What You Are Doing A Neurophysiological Study , 2001, Neuron.

[10]  Lynn Andrea Stein,et al.  Imagination and situated cognition , 1991, J. Exp. Theor. Artif. Intell..

[11]  G. Humphreys,et al.  Detection by action: neuropsychological evidence for action-defined templates in search , 2001, Nature Neuroscience.

[12]  B. Hommel,et al.  Intentional control of attention: action planning primes action-related stimulus dimensions , 2007, Psychological research.

[13]  A. Clark An embodied cognitive science? , 1999, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[14]  R. Desimone,et al.  Competitive Mechanisms Subserve Attention in Macaque Areas V2 and V4 , 1999, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[15]  B. Hommel Event Files: Evidence for Automatic Integration of Stimulus-Response Episodes , 1998 .

[16]  G. Rizzolatti,et al.  Action recognition in the premotor cortex. , 1996, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[17]  J. Decety,et al.  Does visual perception of object afford action? Evidence from a neuroimaging study , 2002, Neuropsychologia.

[18]  Maja J. Mataric,et al.  Integration of representation into goal-driven behavior-based robots , 1992, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[19]  R. Töpper,et al.  Motor cortex hand area and speech: implications for the development of language , 2003, Neuropsychologia.

[20]  G. Sandini,et al.  Understanding mirror neurons. , 2006 .

[21]  W. Prinz Perception and Action Planning , 1997 .

[22]  Aude Billard,et al.  Learning human arm movements by imitation: : Evaluation of a biologically inspired connectionist architecture , 2000, Robotics Auton. Syst..

[23]  D. V. Cramon,et al.  Predicting Perceptual Events Activates Corresponding Motor Schemes in Lateral Premotor Cortex: An fMRI Study , 2002, NeuroImage.

[24]  G. Rizzolatti,et al.  Hearing Sounds, Understanding Actions: Action Representation in Mirror Neurons , 2002, Science.

[25]  Cynthia Breazeal,et al.  Learning From and About Others: Towards Using Imitation to Bootstrap the Social Understanding of Others by Robots , 2005, Artificial Life.

[26]  Morris Moscovitch,et al.  Conscious and nonconscious information processing , 1994 .

[27]  J. J. Gibson The theory of affordances , 1977 .

[28]  G. Rizzolatti,et al.  The mirror neuron system. , 2009, Archives of neurology.

[29]  J. Wolfe,et al.  Guided Search 2.0 A revised model of visual search , 1994, Psychonomic bulletin & review.

[30]  Mark A Bedau,et al.  Artificial life: more than just building and studying computational systems. , 2005, Artificial life.

[31]  S. Cochin,et al.  Perception of motion and qEEG activity in human adults. , 1998, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[32]  Agnieszka Wykowska,et al.  How you move is what you see: action planning biases selection in visual search. , 2009, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[33]  Zoubin Ghahramani,et al.  Computational principles of movement neuroscience , 2000, Nature Neuroscience.

[34]  R. Ellis,et al.  The potentiation of grasp types during visual object categorization , 2001 .

[35]  G. Rizzolatti,et al.  Action observation activates premotor and parietal areas in a somatotopic manner: an fMRI study , 2001, The European journal of neuroscience.

[36]  Medi Nazar,et al.  Pointing Gestures for a Robot Mediated Communication Interface , 2009, ICIRA.

[37]  Scott T. Grafton,et al.  Premotor Cortex Activation during Observation and Naming of Familiar Tools , 1997, NeuroImage.

[38]  H. Heuer,et al.  Perspectives on Perception and Action , 1989 .

[39]  A. Greenwald,et al.  Sensory feedback mechanisms in performance control: with special reference to the ideo-motor mechanism. , 1970, Psychological review.

[40]  B. Hommel,et al.  Blindness to response-compatible stimuli. , 1997, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[41]  Michael Beetz,et al.  How Humans Optimize Their Interaction with the Environment: The Impact of Action Context on Human Perception , 2009, FIRA.

[42]  G. Rizzolatti,et al.  Object representation in the ventral premotor cortex (area F5) of the monkey. , 1997, Journal of neurophysiology.