The goal of this workshop was to advance the understanding of how cognition and action systems are integrated and operate synergistically. This knowledge of how humans efficiently interact and navigate in complex environments is vital for generating a comprehensive understanding of human behavior and will help shape the design of everyday objects and training and working environments. One poignant example is computer technology. Human-computer interfaces equipped with gestural and tangible technologies are becoming increasingly accessible and ubiquitous in educational, leisure, and work settings. A thorough understanding of the interactions between cognition and action is needed help designers engineer devices and environments that maximize the functionality and usability. Thus, the workshop will bring together a diverse group of scholars in the fields of psychology, neuroscience, kinesiology, and human-computer interactions to share and critically evaluate their cutting-edge theoretical, empirical, and translational developments.
Note: Some videos from this workshop may appear slightly altered to protect the privacy of individuals pictured in presentations.
Models, Movements, and Minds: New Tools to
Unite Decision Making and Action
Craig Chapman, University of Alberta, Canada
As neuroscience and psychology embrace the study of the brain as a dynamic and fluid decision-making machine, categorical labels like “Perception”, “Decision” and “Action” are beginning to crumble. Here, I will argue that the tools we use to study human thinking through behaviour must also keep pace with our new worldview. I will first present analysis techniques that are able to capture the fluidity of perception, decision, and action, such as comparing movement trajectories (e.g. functional ANOVA) and measuring how different factors affect movements over different time scales (e.g. functional regression as in Scherbaum, S. et al, Cognition, (2010)). But, just as isolating “Action” as a modular neural component was a mistake, so too is measuring only a single aspect of the sensorimotor stream. Thus, I will also discuss the development of a new tool: the Gaze and Movement Assessment (GaMA) suite which provides a platform for analyzing combined and simultaneously recorded eye- and motion-tracking data, with an imminent extension to also include electroencephalography. Finally, as we empower our research with new tools, we must also retain a fundamental tie to the theories which guide our hypotheses. As such, I will conclude with a description of some new alternatives to decision models which extend more conventional evidence accumulation processes to explain our new conceptualization of decision-making as a flexible and unified process encompassing sensation, movement and everything in between.
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