ABSTRACT
Anticipatory processes are needed in a scientific description of behavior in highly dynamic environments. Part of this behavior can be explained by habits that are activated quickly enough to account for the changes in the environment and are far too quick to be accounted for in a mode of reacting to that which has been perceived in the situation. In action theoretical conceptions, we have highly automated processes that do not need conscious and attention demanding processing and reactions. Moving with high velocity, as pilots do when flying an aircraft, is a most demanding task for our information processing system. Without a proper way to anticipate the upcoming environment and events, many of our motor activities would be too slow and our actions would easily fall behind the stream of events. Even simple organisms like flies have to account for dynamics when flying – and their eye movements do. The principle of reafference has been developed by the Nobel-prize winners von Holst and Mittelstaedt (1950) to account for this fact and the fact that it is necessary to have a process that allows us to decide that a movement has been successful in a dynamic environment. Hoffmann’s model of Anticipatory Behaviour Control is an action theoretic conception that stresses the role of cognitive “top-down processes”. Cognitive “top-down processes” have been a matter of debate in scientific psychology with a long tradition. Since the time of William James and his ideomotor principle (1890-1981), action oriented concepts have been proposed in order to account for top-down processes of behavior. Important and more recent contributions to the role of anticipation in psychomotor behavior and perception stem from Neisser (1976), Prinz (1983) and Hommel, Musseler, Aschersleben, and Prinz (2001). Interestingly enough, these approaches have always been a kind of theoretical counterpart to the behavioristic S-R-Models or SORKC Models (Kanfer and Phillips, 1979). Anticipations are cognitive events that have not been observable directly with sufficient precision for a long period of research. Recent developments to combine behavioral neuroscience approaches, psychophysiological approaches, reconstruction techniques and behavioral observations in well defined paradigms make it possible
to overcome the limitations of the old “introspective methodologies”. These were the basic methods of the early cognitive “research schools” like the “Würzburg School” (Külpe, 1922) who dealt with early developments of the relation between motivational and anticipatory components of behavioral organization (Ach, 1910). A more recent approach to integrate learning theory with anticipatory processes has been elaborated by Hoffmann (1993, 2003). His model explains why rewards work. By letting the individual expect the desired effect, rewards enhance the probability of a rewarded behavior in a given situation. Thus anticipations are not only functional in a dynamic environment by anticipation of future changes in the environment, anticipation might also be relevant with respect to its content.
