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G. Riva, M.T. Anguera, B.K. Wiederhold and F. Mantovani (Eds.)
From Communication to Presence: Cognition, Emotions and Culture towards the
Ultimate Communicative Experience. Festschrift in honor of Luigi Anolli
IOS Press, Amsterdam, 2006, (c) All rights reserved - http://www.emergingcommunication.com
authors, the theory does not consider the complex machinery of the ‘early’ sensory
processes that lead to them. Thus, the Theory of Event Coding is meant to provide a
framework for understanding linkages between (late) perception and (early) action,
or action planning, only.
However, within the Theory of Event Coding, the most important part for our
discussion is the one related to the common coding (Common Coding Theory):
actions are coded in terms of the perceivable effects they should generate. More in
detail, when an effect is intended, the movement that produces this effect as
perceptual input is automatically activated, because actions and their effects are
stored in a common representational domain. As underlined by Prinz [44]:
“Under conditions where stimuli share some features with planned actions, these
stimuli tend, by virtue of similarity, either to induce those actions or interfere with
them, depending on the structure of the task at hand. This implies that there are
certain products of perception on the one hand and certain antecedents of action on
the other that share a common representational domain. This is the common coding
principle. The second conclusion is that actions are planned and controlled in terms
of their effects; that is, that representations of action effects play an important role in
the planning and the control of these actions.” (p. 152).
The Common Coding Theory may be considered a variation of the Ideomotor
Principle introduced by William James [45]. According to James, imagining an
action creates a tendency to its execution, if no antagonistic mental images are
simultaneously present. Prinz [44], suggests that the role of mental images is instead
taken by the distal perceptual events that an action should generate. When the
activation of a common code exceeds a certain threshold, the corresponding motor
codes are automatically triggered.
Further, the Common Coding Theory extends this approach to the domain of event
perception, action perception, and imitation. The underlying process is the following
[46]: first, common event representations become activated by the perceptual input;
then, there is an automatic activation of the motor codes attached to these event
representations; finally, the activation of the motor codes results in a prediction of
the action results in terms of expected perceptual events on the common coding
level. We will discuss more in depth this “simulative” process later.
3.3.2.3 The Converged Zone and Situated Simulation Theories
The motor system was considered to play a very specific role within our cognitive
processes: the control of movement. However, recent neurophysiological findings
convey a totally different picture: the motor system controls actions.
As we will see below, recent data showed that cortical premotor areas contain
neurons that respond to visual, somatosensory, and auditory stimuli. Further,
posterior parietal areas, turned out to play a major role in motor control. Finally, the
premotor and parietal areas, rather than having separate and independent functions,
are neurally integrated not only to control action, but also to serve the function of
building an integrated representation. In particular, as underlined by Gallese [47]
“the so-called ‘motor functions’ of the nervous system not only provide the means to
control and execute action but also to represent it.” (p. 23).
This conclusion - that is very close to the claims of both the Enactive View and the