EXPRESS: Learning and Transfer of Response-Effect Relations

Acting means changing the environment according to one’s own goals, and this often requires bodily movements as responses. How these responses are selected is a central question in contemporary cognitive psychology. The ideomotor principle offers a simple answer based on two assumptions: An agent first learns an association between a response and its effects. Later, this association can be used in a reverse way: when the agent wants to achieve a desired effect and activates its representation, the associated response representation becomes activated as well. This reversed use of the learned association is considered the means to select the required response. In three experiments we addressed two questions related to the first assumption: First, we tested whether effect representations generalize to more abstract conceptual knowledge. This is important, because outside the laboratory and in novel situations, effects are variable and not always exactly identical, such that generalization is necessary for successful actions. Second, the nature of the response-effect relation has been debated recently, and more data are necessary to put theorizing on firm empirical ground. Results of our experiments suggest that (a) abstraction to conceptual knowledge seems to occur only under very restricted situations, and (b) it seems that no (implicit) associations between responses and effects are learned, but rather (explicit) propositional knowledge in the form of rules.