Visuomotor adaptation to novel environments can occur via non-physical means, such as observation. Observation does not appear to activate the same implicit learning processes as physical practice, rather it appears to be more strategic in nature. However, there is evidence that interspersing observational practice with physical practice can benefit performance and memory consolidation either through the combined benefits of separate processes or through a change in processes activated during observation trials. To test these ideas, we asked people to (...) practice aiming to targets with visually rotated cursor feedback or engage in a combined practice schedule comprising physical practice and observation of projected videos showing successful aiming. Ninety-three participants were randomly assigned to one of five groups: massed physical practice, distributed physical practice, or one of 3 types of combined practice: alternating blocks, or all observation before or after blocked physical practice. Participants received 100 practice trials. All groups improved in adaptation trials and showed savings across the 24-h retention interval relative to initial practice. There was some forgetting for all groups, but the magnitudes were larger for physical practice groups. The Act and Obs_During groups were most accurate in retention and did not differ, suggesting that observation can serve as a replacement for physical practice if supplied intermittently and offers advantages above just resting. However, after-effects associated with combined practice were smaller than those for physical practice control groups, suggesting that beneficial learning effects as a result of observation were not due to activation of implicit learning processes. Reaction time, variable error, and post-test rotation drawings supported this conclusion that adaptation for observation groups was promoted by explicit/strategic processes. (shrink)

Adaptation to right-shifting prisms improves left neglect for mental number line bisection. This study examined whether adaptation affects the mental number line in normal participants. Thirty-six participants completed a mental number line task before and after adaptation to either: left-shifting prisms, right-shifting prisms or control spectacles that did not shift the visual scene. Participants viewed number triplets (e.g. 16, 36, 55) and determined whether the numerical distance was greater on the left or right side of the inner (...) number. Participants demonstrated a leftward bias (i.e. overestimated the length occupied by numbers located on the left side of the number line) that was consistent with the effect of pseudoneglect. The leftward bias was corrected by a short period of visuomotor adaptation to left-shifting prisms, but remained unaffected by adaptation to right-shifting prisms and control spectacles. The findings demonstrate that a simple visuomotor task alters the representation of space on the mental number line in normal participants. (shrink)

Concurrent adaptation to two different visuomotor transformations has been shown to be possible as long as discriminative contextual cues are available. The authors examined explicit and implicit components of visually cued dual adaptation in younger and older adults. They found that only young adults, but not old adults, produced appropriate adaptive shifts of hand-movement direction to compensate for the visuomotor rotations. Aftereffects, conceived as a measure of implicit knowledge, were only poorly developed. Furthermore, only participants in (...) the younger group exhibited systematic explicit knowledge of the visuomotor rotations. Subsequent analyses revealed strong correlations between the quality of explicit knowledge and the overall visuomotor adaptation. Thus, visually cued dual adaptation to two opposite visuomotor rotations is primarily mediated by conscious strategic corrections based on explicit knowledge of the transformations, a process, which is selectively impaired in older adults. (shrink)

Visuo-motor adaptation to optical prisms displacing the visual scene (prism adaptation, PA) is a method used for investigating visuomotor plasticity in healthy individuals and, in clinical settings, for the rehabilitation of unilateral spatial neglect. In the standard paradigm, the adaptation phase involves repeated pointings to visual targets, while wearing optical prisms displacing the visual scene laterally. Here we explored differences in PA, and its aftereffects (AEs), as related to the sensory modality of the target. Visual, auditory, (...) and multisensory - audio-visual - targets in the adaptation phase were used, while participants wore prisms displacing the visual field rightwards by 10◦. Proprioceptive, visual, visual-proprioceptive, auditory-proprioceptive straight-ahead shifts were measured. Pointing to auditory and to audio-visual targets in the adaptation phase produces proprioceptive, visual-proprioceptive, and auditory-proprioceptive AEs, as the typical visual targets did. This finding reveals that cross-modal plasticity effects involve both the auditory and the visual modality, and their interactions (Experiment 1). Even a shortened PA phase, requiring only 24 pointings to visual and audio-visual targets (Experiment 2), is sufficient to bring about AEs, as compared to the standard 92-pointings procedure. Finally, pointings to auditory targets cause AEs, although PA with a reduced number of pointings (24) to auditory targets brings about smaller AEs, as compared to the 92-pointings procedure (Experiment 3). Together, results from the three experiments extend to the auditory modality the sensorimotor plasticity underlying the typical AEs produced by PA to visual targets. Importantly, PA to auditory targets appears characterized by less accurate pointings and error correction, suggesting that the auditory component of the PA process may be less central to the building up of the AEs, than the sensorimotor pointing activity per se. These findings highlight both the effectiveness of a reduced number of pointings for bringing about AEs, and the possibility of inducing PA with auditory targets, which may be used as a compensatory route in patients with visual deficits. (shrink)

Prism adaptation is a form of visuomotor training that produces both sensorimotor and cognitive aftereffects depending on the direction of the visual displacement. Recently, a neural framework explaining both types of PA-induced aftereffects has been proposed, but direct evidence for it is lacking. We employed Structural Equation Modeling, a form of effective connectivity analysis, to establish directionality among connected nodes of the brain network thought to subserve PA. The findings reveal two distinct network branches: a loop involving connections (...) from the parietal cortices to the right parahippocampal gyrus, and a branch linking the lateral premotor cortex to the parahippocampal gyrus via the cerebellum. Like the sensorimotor aftereffects, the first branch exhibited qualitatively different modulations for left versus right PA, and critically, changes in these connections were correlated with the magnitude of the sensorimotor aftereffects. Like the cognitive aftereffects, changes in the second branch were qualitatively similar for left and right PA, with greater change for left PA and a trend correlation with cognitive aftereffects. These results provide direct evidence that PA is supported by two functionally distinct subnetworks, a parietal–temporal network responsible for sensorimotor aftereffects and a fronto-cerebellar network responsible for cognitive aftereffects. (shrink)

Adaptation to novel visuomotor transformations for example when navigating a cursor on a computer monitor by using a computer mouse, can be explicit or implicit. Explicit adjustments are made when people are informed about the occurrence and the type of a novel visuomotor transformation and intentionally modify their movements. Implicit adjustments, in contrast, are made without reportable knowledge of a novel visuomotor transformation and without a change intention. The relation of implicit adjustments to explicit adjustments needs (...) further clarification. Here we show that these two types of adjustment occur at the same time and remain functionally independent. The size of total adjustment turned out to be the sum of explicit and implicit adjustments measured in isolation, even when both processes produce opposite outcomes. In perspective our results demonstrate that automatic, implicit processes of motor control are not superseded by intentional, explicit ones, but only superposed. (shrink)

Many researchers consider language to be definitionally unique to humans. However, increasing evidence suggests that language emerged via a series of adaptations to neural systems supporting earlier capacities for visuomotor integration and manual action. This paper reviews comparative neuroscience evidence for the evolutionary progression of these adaptations. An outstanding question is how to mechanistically explain the emergence of new capacities from pre-existing circuitry. One possibility is that human brains may have undergone selection for greater plasticity, reducing the extent to (...) which brain organization is hard-wired and increasing the extent to which it is shaped by socially transmitted, learned behaviors. Mutations that made these new abilities easier or faster to learn would have undergone positive selection, and over time, the neural changes once associated with individual neural plasticity would tend to become heritable, innate, and fixed. Clearly, though, language is not entirely “innate;” it does not emerge without the requisite environmental input and experience. Thus, a mechanistic explanation for the evolution of language must address the inherent trade-off between the evolutionary pressure for underlying neural systems to be flexible and sensitive to environmental input vs. the tendency over time for continually adaptive behaviors to become reliably expressed in an early-emerging, canalized, less flexible manner. (shrink)

One characteristic of the transition from the Middle Paleolithic to the Upper Paleolithic in Europe was the emergence of representational charcoal drawings and engravings by Aurignacian and Gravettian artists. European Neanderthals never engaged in representational drawing during the Middle and Early Upper Paleolithic, a property that might reflect less developed visuomotor coordination. This article postulates a causal relationship between an evolved ability of anatomically modern humans to throw spears accurately while hunting and their ability to draw representational images from (...) working memory. Unlike Neanderthals, archaic and anatomically modern humans in sub-Saharan Africa adopted longer-range hunting practices using hand-cast spears as a compensation for the emergence of increasingly wary game. For Neanderthals, paleoclimatic fluctuations likely precluded consistent hunting of cold-adapted game, a property making game more approachable for close-range hunting with thrusting spears. As evidence of less historical wariness of humans, many of the species hunted by Neanderthals were eventually domesticated. Due to strong sources of natural selection on archaic and anatomically modern humans for effective hunting, the parietal cortex that integrates visual imagery and motor coordination expanded progressively, yielding the globular shape of the human cranium that is not evident in Neanderthals. To characterize how the cognitive properties employed for throwing spears and drawing line work are similar, the Upper Paleolithic drawings of animals in Chauvet cave, France, are discussed in the speculative context of how these artists engaged simultaneously in overt attention to guide their hand movements and covert attention to their mental images during the drawing process. (shrink)

Considering the properties of mirror neurons (MNs) in terms of development and phylogeny, we offer a novel, unifying, and testable account of their evolution according to the available data and try to unify apparently discordant research, including the plasticity of MNs during development, their adaptive value and their phylogenetic relationships and continuity. We hypothesize that the MN system reflects a set of interrelated traits, each with an independent natural history due to unique selective pressures, and propose that there are at (...) least three evolutionarily significant trends that gave raise to three subtypes: hand visuomotor, mouth visuomotor, and audio–vocal. Specifically, we put forward a mosaic evolution hypothesis, which posits that different types of MNs may have evolved at different rates within and among species. This evolutionary hypothesis represents an alternative to both adaptationist and associative models. Finally, the review offers a strong heuristic potential in predicting the circumstances under which specific variations and properties of MNs are expected. Such predictive value is critical to test new hypotheses about MN activity and its plastic changes, depending on the species, the neuroanatomical substrates, and the ecological niche. (shrink)

The visual system adapts to a wide range of visual features, from lower-level features like color and motion to higher-level features like causality and, perhaps, number. According to some, adaptation is a strictly perceptual phenomenon, such that the presence of adaptation licenses the claim that a feature is truly perceptual in nature. Given the theoretical importance of claims about adaptation, then, it is important to understand exactly when the visual system does and does not exhibit adaptation. (...) Here, we take as a case study one specific kind of adaptation: visual adaptation to size. Supported by evidence from four experiments, we argue that, despite robust effects of size adaptation in the lab, (1) size adaptation effects are phenomenologically underwhelming (in some cases, hardly appreciable at all), (2) some effects of size adaptation appear contradictory, and difficult to explain given current theories of size adaptation, and (3) prior studies on size adaptation may have failed to isolate size as the adapted dimension. Ultimately, we argue that while there is evidence to license the claim that size adaptation is genuine, size adaptation is a puzzling and poorly understood phenomenon. (shrink)

It is all but universally accepted in epistemology that knowledge is factive: S knows that p only if p. The purpose of this thesis is to present an argument against the factivity of knowledge and in doing so develop a non-factive approach to the analysis of knowledge. The argument against factivity presented here rests largely on empirical evidence, especially extant research into visuomotor noise, which suggests that the beliefs that guide everyday motor action are not strictly true. However, as (...) we still want to attribute knowledge on the basis of successful motor action, I argue that the best option is to replace factivity with a weaker constraint on knowledge, one on which certain false beliefs might still be known. In defence of this point, I develop the non-factive analysis of knowledge, which demonstrates that a non-factive constraint might do the same theoretical work as factivity. (shrink)

Joint actions often require agents to track others’ actions while planning and executing physically incongruent actions of their own. Previous research has indicated that this can lead to visuomotor interference effects when it occurs outside of joint action. How is this avoided or overcome in joint actions? We hypothesized that when joint action partners represent their actions as interrelated components of a plan to bring about a joint action goal, each partner’s movements need not be represented in relation to (...) distinct, incongruent proximal goals. Instead they can be represented in relation to a single proximal goal – especially if the movements are, or appear to be, mechanically linked to a more distal joint action goal. To test this, we implemented a paradigm in which participants produced finger movements that were either congruent or incongruent with those of a virtual partner, and either with or without a joint action goal (the joint flipping of a switch, which turned on two light bulbs). Our findings provide partial support for the hypothesis that visuomotor interference effects can be reduced when two physically incongruent actions are represented as mechanically interdependent contributions to a joint action goal. (shrink)

The extent to which visual information on the contralateral, unattended side influences the performance of patients with hemispatial neglect was studied in a visuomotor reaching task. We replicated the well-established finding that, relative to target-alone trials, normal subjects are slower to reach to targets in the presence of visual distractors which appear either ipsilateral or contralateral to the target, with greater interference in the former condition. Six patients with hemispatial neglect showed even greater interference than did the normal subjects (...) when the distractor appeared ipsilaterally but showed no significant interference from contralateral distractors. This pattern of performance was qualitatively similar for patients with lesions restricted to posterior regions and for patients with more extensive lesions involving both posterior and anterior brain regions. These findings suggest that, in the visuomotor domain, information on the contralateral side is processed minimally, if at all, in patients with hemispatial neglect. (shrink)

Accurate perception of moving objects would be useful; accurate visually guided action is crucial. Visual motion across the scene influences perceived object location and the trajectory of reaching movements to objects. In this commentary, I propose that the visual system assigns the position of any object based on the predominant motion present in the scene, and that this is used to guide reaching movements to compensate for delays in visuomotor processing.

Is action-guiding vision cognitively penetrable? More specifically, is the visual processing that guides our goal-directed actions sensitive to semantic information from cognitive states? This paper critically examines a recent family of arguments whose aim is to challenge a widespread and influential view in philosophy and cognitive science: the view that action-guiding vision is cognitively impenetrable. I argue, in response, that while there may very well be top–down causal influences on action-guiding vision, they should not be taken to be an instance (...) of cognitive penetration. Assuming otherwise is to assign a computational role to the influencing states that they cannot perform. Although questions about cognitive penetrability are ultimately empirical, the issues addressed in this paper are largely philosophical. The discussion here highlights an important set of considerations that help better understand the relations between cognition, vision, and action. (shrink)

Neural delays, which are generally defined as visuomotor delays in interceptive actions, must be compensated to enable accurate timing in movement. Visuomotor delays can depend on the kind of task, the use of information, and the skill of the performer. The compensation for such delays does not necessarily require prediction or representation but can be made by an attunement of some parameters in what is called a law of control.

The adaptive reuse of industrial heritage, a critical component in addressing radical climate change-related urban transitions, is increasingly pertinent. This paper distinguishes ‘urban transitions’ from ‘urban transformation,’ emphasizing a more gradual, adaptive approach to urban development under the pressures of climate change. It explores the repurposing of industrial buildings and spaces, maintaining their cultural and historical value while meeting current urban needs. Through a mixed-methods approach, the paper analyses how adaptive reuse contributes to sustainable urban development, examines the scale and (...) impact of such projects from local quarters to city-wide implications, and discusses the potential negative consequences, including gentrif ication. The study spans various global regions, including Europe, the United States, Latin America, Canada, and Australia, using case studies to illustrate the effectiveness of adaptive reuse in promoting sustainability, revitalizing urban areas, and preserving cultural heritage. The paper questions the viability of traditional long-term sustainable urban development strategies in the face of rapid environmental and societal changes, suggesting a potential need for paradigm shifts in urban planning. (shrink)

It is often assumed that adaptation — a temporary change in sensitivity to a perceptual dimension following exposure to that dimension — is a litmus test for what is and is not a “primary visual attribute”. Thus, papers purporting to find evidence of number adaptation motivate a claim of great philosophical significance: That number is something that can be seen in much the way that canonical visual features, like color, contrast, size, and speed, can. Fifteen years after its (...) reported discovery, number adaptation’s existence seems to be nearly undisputed, with dozens of papers documenting support for the phenomenon. The aim of this paper is to offer a counterweight — to critically assess the evidence for and against number adaptation. After surveying the many reasons for thinking that number adaptation exists, we introduce several lesser-known reasons to be skeptical. We then advance an alternative account — the old news hypothesis — which can accommodate previously published findings while explaining various (otherwise unexplained) anomalies in the existing literature. Next, we describe the results of eight pre-registered experiments which pit our novel old news hypothesis against the received number adaptation hypothesis. Collectively, the results of these experiments undermine the number adaptation hypothesis on several fronts, whilst consistently supporting the old news hypothesis. More broadly our work raises questions about the status of adaptation itself as a means of discerning what is and is not a visual attribute. (shrink)

Here is a crucial question in the contemporary philosophy of perception: how can we be aware of action properties? According to the perceptual view, we consciously see them: they are present in our visual phenomenology. However, this view faces some problems. First, I review these problems. Then, I propose an alternative view, according to which we are aware of action properties because we imagine them through a special form of imagery, which I call visuomotor imagery. My account is to (...) be preferred as it offers an explanation of our awareness of action properties without generating all the problems that the perceptual view faces. (shrink)

Neural delays, which are generally defined as visuomotor delays in interceptive actions, must be compensated to enable accurate timing in movement. Visuomotor delays can depend on the kind of task, the use of information, and the skill of the performer. The compensation for such delays does not necessarily require prediction or representation but can be made by an attunement of some parameters in what is called a law of control.

Recent work in "embodied, embedded" cognitive science links mental contents to large-scale distributed effects: dynamic patterns implicating elements of (what are traditionally seen as) sensing, reasoning and acting. Central to this approach is an idea of biological cognition as profoundly "action-oriented" - geared not to the creation of rich, passive inner models of the world, but to the cheap and efficient production of real-world action in real-world context. A case in point is Hurley's (1998) account of the profound role of (...) motor output in fixing the contents of conscious visual awareness - an account that also emphasizes distributed vehicles and long-range dynamical loops. Such stories can seem dramatically opposed to accounts, such as Milner and Goodale (1995), that stress relatively local mechanisms and that posit firm divisions between processes of visual awareness and of visuomotor action. But such accounts, I argue, can be deeply complimentary and together illustrate an important lesson. The lesson is that cognition may be embodied and action-oriented in two distinct - but complimentary - ways. There is a way of being embodied and action-oriented that implies being closely geared to the fine-grained control of low level effectors (hands, arms, legs and so on). And there is a way of being embodied and action-oriented that implies being closely geared to gross motor intentions, current goals, and schematic motor plans. Human cognition, I suggest, is embodied and action-oriented in both these ways. But the neural systems involved, and the size and scope of the key dynamic loops, may be quite different in each case. (shrink)

Moral luck is a puzzling aspect of our psychology: Why do we punish outcomes that were not intended (i.e. accidents)? Prevailing psychological accounts of moral luck characterize it as an accident or error, stemming either from a re‐evaluation of the agent's mental state or from negative affect aroused by the bad outcome itself. While these models have strong evidence in their favor, neither can account for the unique influence of accidental outcomes on punishment judgments, compared with other categories of moral (...) judgment. Why might punishment be particularly sensitive to moral luck? We suggest that such sensitivity is easily understood from the broader perspective of punishment's ultimate adaptive goal: Changing others’ behavior by exploiting their capacity to learn. This pedagogical perspective accounts for the exceptional influence of outcomes on punitive sentiments and makes predictions for additional moderators of punishment. We review evidence supporting the pedagogical hypothesis of punishment and discuss fruitful directions for future research. (shrink)

Second, this collection of cognitive programs evolved in the Pleistocene to solve the adaptive problems regularly faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors-...

The perception/planning–control conception has a direct predecessor in a cognitive/sensorimotor scheme, where the cognitive branch includes Glover's perception and planning functions. The sensorimotor branch corresponds to Glover's control function. The cognitive/sensorimotor scheme, like the perception/planning–control scheme, differentiates between motor planning and direct motor control, which is inaccessible to awareness or to long-term memory.