Are freely chosen actions generated by stimulus codes or effect codes?
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Are freely chosen actions generated by stimulus codes or effect codes? Markus Janczyk 1
&
Christoph Naefgen 2 & Wilfried Kunde 3
# The Author(s) 2020
Abstract A long-standing debate revolves around which mental codes allow humans to control behavior. The internal stimulus model (going back to Rudolf Hermann Lotze) proposes that behavior is controlled by codes of stimuli that had previously preceded corresponding motor activities. The internal effect model (going back to Emil Harleß) proposes that behavior is controlled by codes of perceptual effects that had previously resulted from corresponding motor activities. Here, we present a test of these two control models. We observed evidence for both models with stronger evidence for the internal stimulus model. We suggest that the proposed experimental setup might be a useful tool to study the relative strengths of stimulus control and effect control of behavior in various contexts. Keywords Action control . Intention . Action effects . Free choice . Forced choice
Humans normally have some control over what they do. That is, they have some freedom of how to behave in a given situation and experience themselves as the cause of that behavior. While it is obvious that humans can act in such a selfdetermined way, it is a fundamental question as to which mental processes enable such control. Starting from the 19th century, two approaches to this question have been proposed, the internal stimulus model and the internal effect model. Both approaches share assumptions. They both propose that actions are generated by means of codes of perceptual events, which had become linked to motor activities by previous learning experience. They differ, though, in the type of perceptual codes doing so (see Fig. 1).
* Markus Janczyk [email protected] 1
Department of Psychology, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany
2
Faculty of Psychology, FernUniversität Hagen, Hagen, Germany
3
Department of Psychology III, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany
The internal stimulus model dates back to Rudolf Hermann Lotze (1852). Lotze assumed that humans first acquire stimulus–response links by observing themselves responding to certain situations in specific ways. Later, humans generate behavior intentionally by imagination, rather than actual experience, of corresponding stimulation: Hier wie überall kann daher der Wille nur jene inneren psychischen Zustände erzeugen, welche der Naturlauf zu Anfangspunkten der Wirkung nach aussen bestimmt hat; die Ausführung der Wirkung dagegen muss er der eigenen unwillkürlichen Kraft überlassen, mit der jene Zustände ihre Folgen herbeizuführen genöthigt sind.1 (Lotze, 1852, p. 301) In other words, humans gain control over behavior via stimulus control, that is, by exposing themselves to mentally simulated stimulation that then activates those responses, which had been previously given to such (nonsimulated) stimulation (see Fig. 1, left column). This view has been elaborated by Vygotski (1962) with a focus on verbal stimulation. The idea here is t
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