Human Action Control

Chapter 1. Introduction and overview * Explains the basic theoretical issues and questions, mentions some historical lines of thought, and ends with a functional model of human action that will help to organize the remaining chapters. Chapter 2. Neurobiological foundations of human action * provides a brief overview of the human nervous system and the major cortical areas involved in action planning and action control. Chapter 3. Intention and action goal * defines how intentions and goals can be conceptualized, what role consciousness could play, where goals and intentions are coming from, how they are acquired and cognitively represented. Chapter 4. Perception and action * Discusses the relationship between perception and action, both dissociations and interactions, as well as models explaining dissociations and the integration of perceptual and action processes. Chapter 5. Selecting an action * Discusses and compares several ways to select an action, ranging from stimulus-triggered selection over rule-based selection to truly intentional action selection, and addresses the role of practice. Chapter 6. Planning an action * Explains the cognitive role of an action plan, discusses how action plans are cognitively represented, how they are structured and specified, and how they are acquired. Chapter 7. Planning an action sequence * Explains the functional problems of sequencing and ways to address them, reviews and compares basic sequencing models, discusses how complex, hierarchical action plans can be constructed and represented. Chapter 8. Controlling and coordinating multiple actions * Explains the processes involved in switching between alternative actions and the cognitive costs associated with switching, reviews the major processes involved in such costs, explains the cognitive problems of task coordination and which cognitive processes are responsible for cognitive capacity bottlenecks. Chapter 9. Action monitoring and errors * Discusses the purpose of monitoring actions, processes involved therein and processes responsible for error repair.