While action selection strategies in well‐defined domains have received considerable attention, little is yet known about how people choose what to do next in ill‐defined tasks. In this contribution, we shed light on this issue by considering everyday tasks, which in many cases have a multitude of possible solutions (e.g., it does not matter in which order the items are brought to the table when setting a table) and are thus categorized as ill‐defined problems. Even if there are (...) no hard constraints on the ordering of subtasks in everyday activities, our research shows that people exhibit specific preferences. We propose that these preferences arise from bounded rationality, that is, people only have limited knowledge and processing power available, which results in a preference to minimize the overall physical and cognitive effort. In the context of everyday activities, this can be achieved by (a) taking properties of the spatial environment into account to use them to one's advantage, and (b) employing a stepwise‐optimal action selection strategy. We present the Opportunistic Planning Model as an explanatory cognitive model, which instantiates these assumptions, and show that the model is able to generalize to new everyday tasks, outperforming machine learning models such as neural networks during generalization. (shrink)

Several attempts have been made previously to provide a biological grounding for cognitive architectures by relating their components to the computations of specific brain circuits. Often, the architecture's action selection system is identified with the basal ganglia. However, this identification overlooks one of the most important features of the basal ganglia—the existence of a direct and an indirect pathway that compete against each other. This characteristic has important consequences in decision-making tasks, which are brought to light by Parkinson's (...) disease as well as genetic differences in dopamine receptors. This paper shows that a standard model of action selection in a cognitive architecture cannot replicate any of these findings, details an alternative solution that reconciles action selection in the architecture with the physiology of the basal ganglia, and extends the domain of application of cognitive architectures. The implication of this solution for other architectures and existing models are discussed. (shrink)

Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 14, Issue 2, Page 344-362, April 2022.

In this paper, I examine an evolutionary approach to the action selection problem and illustrate how it helps raise an objection to the predictive processing account. Clark examines the predictive processing account as a theory of brain function that aims to unify perception, action, and cognition, but - despite this aim - fails to consider action selection overtly. He off ers an account of action control with the implication that minimizing prediction error is an (...) imperative of living organisms because, according to the predictive processing account, action is employed to fulfill expectations and reduce prediction error. One way in which this can be achieved is by seeking out the least stimulating environment and staying there. Bayesian, neuroscientific, and machine learning approaches into a single framework whose overarching principle is the minimization of surprise (or, equivalently, the maximization of expectation. But, most living organisms do not find, and stay in, surprise free environments. This paper explores this objection, also called the “dark room problem”, and examines Clark’s response to the problem. Finally, I recommend that if supplemented with an account of action selection, Clark’s account will avoid the dark room problem. (shrink)

This volume brings together a selection of Rosalind Hursthouse’s essays on Aristotle, virtue ethics, and social philosophy. These articles—many of which are published in more obscure venues—provide valuable context and clarification for much of her more famous work on virtue ethics while drawing attention to new avenues of philosophical investigation Hursthouse pursued. Important contributions include articles on the development of virtue in children, what the Aristotelian practically wise person knows, how virtue ethicists can inform discussions about environmental and animal (...) ethics, what the starting point for virtue politics should be in a contemporary political context, and how human nature and ethical naturalism could provide the foundation for a virtue ethical system. (shrink)

Winner-takes-all (WTA) typically describes a mechanism for selecting the highest peak of activity in a sensory map that encodes independent representations of potential targets. To Findlay & Walker, WTA is an inherent property of a motor map that is incapable of representing multiple targets independently. Although the output of a WTA system should be characteristic of only one target, actions can be influenced by multiple targets.

In standard models of decision making, participation in violent political action is understood as the product of instrumentally rational reasoning. According to this line of thinking, instrumentally rational individuals will participate in violent political action only if there are selective incentives that are limited to participants. We argue in favor of an alternate model of political violence where participants are motivated by moral commitments to collective sacred values. Correlative and experimental empirical evidence in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian (...) conflict strongly supports this alternate view. (shrink)

Like other admirers of Rosalind Hursthouse’s work, I was delighted to see the publication of this volume, which collects nineteen of her essays published over the course of nearly three decades. So...

One of the most influential recent accounts of attention is Wayne Wu’s. According to Wu, attention is selection-for-action. I argue that this proposal faces a dilemma: either it denies clear cases of attention capture, or it acknowledges these cases but classifies many inattentive episodes as attentive.

Choice often proceeds in two stages: We construct a shortlist on the basis of limited and uncertain information about the options and then reduce this uncertainty by examining the shortlist in greater detail. The goal is to do well when making a final choice from the option set. I argue that we cannot realise this goal by constructing a ranking over the options at shortlisting stage which determines of each option whether it is more or less worthy of being included (...) in a shortlist. This is relevant to the 2010 UK Equality Act. The Act requires that shortlists be constructed on grounds of candidate rankings and affirmative action is only permissible for equally qualified candidates. This is misguided: Shortlisting candidates with lower expected qualifications but higher variance may raise the chance of finding an exceptionally strong candidate. If it does, then shortlisting such candidates would make eminent business sense and there is nothing unfair about it. This observation opens up room for including more underrepresented candidates with protected characteristics, as they are more likely to display greater variance in the selector’s credence functions at shortlisting stage. (shrink)

Professor John Elliott has spent the last 30 years researching, thinking and writing about some of the key and enduring issues in Education Research and Action Research. He has contributed over 25 books and 600 articles to the field. In this book, he brings together over 16 of his key writings, in one place. Starting with a specially written Introduction, which gives an overview of Professor Elliott's career and contextualizes his selection, the chapters cover: · Rethinking Educational Research (...) · Doing Classroom Action Research · Pedagogy ad Form of Action Research · The Challenge of Action Research This must-have book for anyone wishing to know more about the development of Action Research and Educational Research and John Elliott's contribution to these exciting fields. (shrink)

This chapter challenges the assumption of attention functioning as a means of preventing consciousness from getting overloaded, and also challenges the assumption of any relationships between management of scarce resources and the original biological function of attention. It emphasizes that attention is directly derived from mechanisms governing the control of basic movements. The author establishes the theoretical stage through discussions on the implications of the brain’s preference to stimulus events and action plans in a feature-based manner and processing information (...) through different mechanisms. The chapter also discusses many empirical findings supporting the conception of action planning and action control having the potential to determine perception and attention. (shrink)

Evidence is presented for the notion that selection-for-perception and selection-for-action progress in parallel to become tightly coupled at the saccade target before the execution of the movement. Such a conception might be incorporated in the E-Z Reader model of eye-movement control in reading.

Prior work shows that the possibility of action to an object facilitates attentional deployment. We sought to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying this modulation of attention by examining ERPs to target objects that were either congruently or incongruently gripped for their use in the presence of a congruently or incongruently gripped distractor. Participants responded to the presence or absence of a target object matching a preceding action word with a distractor object presented in the opposite location. Participants were (...) faster in responding to congruently gripped targets compared to incongruently gripped targets. There was a reduced N2pc potential when the target was congruently gripped, and the distractor was incongruently gripped compared to the conditions where targets were incongruently gripped or when the distractor, as well as target, was congruently gripped. The N2pc results indicate that target selection is easier when action information is congruent with an object’s use. (shrink)