Abstract. How can goals be represented in natural and artificial systems? How can they be learned? How can they trigger actions? This paper describes, analyses and compares two of the most influential models of goal-oriented behavior: the ideomotor principle (IMP), which was introduced in the psychological literature, and the “test, operate, test, exit ” model (TOTE) proposed in the field of cybernetic. This analysis indicates that the IMP and the TOTE highlight complementary aspects of goal-orientedness. In order to illustrate this point, the paper reviews three computational architectures that implement various aspects of the IMP and the TOTE, discusses their main peculiarities and limitations, and suggests how some of their features can be translated into specific mechanisms in order to implement them in artificial intelligent systems.

Abstract. What does it mean for a system to be goal oriented? In this paper we investigate how goals are represented and how they activate actions. We review the main philosophical and psychological assumptions about the ideomotor principle and we compare it with the TOTE model in cybernetics. We also present three computational architectures that implement goal orientedness, discussing their main peculiarities and limitations with respect to the ideomotor principle and TOTE.

The authors argue that human sequential learning is often but not always characterized by a shift from stimulus- to plan-based action control. To diagnose this shift, they manipulated the frequency of 1st-order transitions in a repeated manual left–right sequence, assuming that performance is sensitive to frequencyinduced biases under stimulus- but not plan-based control. Indeed, frequency biases tended to disappear with practice, but only for explicit learners. This tendency was facilitated by visual–verbal target stimuli, response-contingent sounds, and intentional instructions and hampered by auditory (but not visual) noise. Findings are interpreted within an event-coding model of action control, which holds that plans for sequences of discrete actions are coded phonetically, integrating order and relative timing. The model distinguishes between plan acquisition, linked to explicit knowledge, and plan execution, linked to the action control mode.

Associative accounts of goal-directed action, developed in the fields of human ideomotor action and that of animal learning, can capture cognitive belief-desire psychology of human decision-making. Whereas outcome-response accounts can account for the fact that the thought of a goal can call to mind the action that has previously procured this goal, response-outcome accounts capture decision-making processes that start out with the consideration of possible response alternatives followed only in the second instance by evaluation of their consequences. We argue that while the outcome-response mechanism plays a crucial role in response priming effects, the response-outcome mechanism is particularly important for action selection on the basis of current needs and desires. We therefore develop an integrative account that encapsulates these two routes of action selection within the framework of the associative cybernetic model. This model has the additional benefit of providing mechanisms for the incentive modulation of goal-directed action and for the development of behavioural autonomy, and therefore provides a promising account of the multi-faceted process of animal as well as human instrumental decision-making.