Smart moves: The Psychology of everyday perceptual-motor acts

Abstract

In 1996, when IBM’s Deep Blue computer beat the world’s greatest chess player (Gary Kasparov; Hsu, 1999), a person rather than Deep Blue was responsible for looking at the board and moving the pieces. IBM may have chosen to use a person rather than a computer for the perceptual-motor aspects of chess-playing because those aspects may have seemed too uninteresting to simulate. Nonetheless, no computer in 1996, and none now, can begin to do what any normal four-year old can do – climb trees, pick strawberries, or set up a chess board and lift and move pieces to and from desired locations. The problems to be solved in such tasks are not just physical; they are also psychological. Our understanding of the psychological bases of everyday perceptual-motor acts is miniscule compared to our understanding of the psychological bases of more intellectual activities such as chess playing. However, progress is being made on the psychology of physical action. This chapter reviews some progress in this area of research as instantiated in the theory of motor planning developed by the author and his colleagues