Department of Psychology III, University of Würzburg, Röntgenring 11, 97070, Würzburg, Germany.
Department of Psychology, Trier University, Trier, Germany.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2024 May;86(4):1330-1341. doi: 10.3758/s13414-024-02863-0. Epub 2024 Mar 21.
When a movement triggers effects with incompatible features, conflict between action and effect features creates costs for action planning and initiation. We investigated whether such action control costs also factor into action choices in terms of the principle of least effort. Participants completed a reaction-time experiment, where they were instructed to perform left and right mouse swipes in response to directional cues presented on the screen. Participants could select between two action options on each trial: Depending on which part of the screen (upper or lower) the action was performed in, the swipe resulted in a visual stimulus moving in the same (compatible) or in the opposite (incompatible) direction as the mouse. Incompatible action-effect mappings did indeed incur action control costs. In accordance with effort avoidance, the proportion of compatible choices was significantly above chance level, suggesting that action selection and initiation costs factor into participants preferences. Interestingly, however, participants' choice tendencies were not predicted by the actual increase in action-initiation costs in the incompatible condition. This indicates that effort-related decisions are not simply based on monitoring performance in the actual task, but they are also influenced by preestablished notions of action-planning costs.
当一个动作引发具有不兼容特征的效果时，动作和效果特征之间的冲突会给动作规划和启动带来成本。我们研究了在最小努力原则的层面上，这种动作控制成本是否也会影响到动作选择。参与者完成了一个反应时实验，他们被指示根据屏幕上呈现的方向提示进行左右鼠标滑动。在每次试验中，参与者可以在两种动作选项之间进行选择：根据动作执行的屏幕部分（上部或下部），滑动会导致视觉刺激以与鼠标相同（兼容）或相反（不兼容）的方向移动。不兼容的动作-效果映射确实会产生动作控制成本。与避免努力相一致，兼容选择的比例明显高于随机水平，这表明动作选择和启动成本会影响参与者的偏好。然而，有趣的是，参与者的选择倾向并不能根据不兼容条件下动作启动成本的实际增加来预测。这表明，与努力相关的决策不仅仅是基于对实际任务中表现的监控，还受到预先设定的动作规划成本观念的影响。
