Action and Cognitive Processing: Functional Links between Action Planning and the Processing of Perceptual, Semantic and Mathematical Information

Abstract

The thesis investigates the coupling between the processes involved in the preparation of motoric actions and cognitive information processing. Four studies were reported that demonstrate an involvement of motor representations in different cognitive domains ranging from “low-level" cognitive processes such as visual perception up to “high-level" cognitive processes such as the coding of abstract semantic information (e.g., word and number reading). The outcomes of the empirical work can be summered by four effects: the “priming” of visual motion perception by motor actions (chapter 2), the interaction between action planning and word processing (chapter 3), the “priming” of grasping actions by numbers (chapter 4), and the effect of coding intentions on spatial number representations (chapter 5). All experimental findings show that the functional connections between motor actions and cognitive processes are not restricted to certain types of information or certain representational domains. They provide thus support for the view that the involvement of motor representations is a universal coding principle of the brain to deal with different kinds of cognitive demands.