Traditional approaches to human information processing tend to deal with perception and action planning in isolation, so that an adequate account of the perception-action interface is still missing. On the perceptual side, the dominant cognitive view largely underestimates, and thus fails to account for, the impact of action-related processes on both the processing of perceptual information and on perceptual learning. On the action side, most approaches conceive of action planning as a mere continuation of stimulus processing, thus failing to account for the goal-directedness of even the simplest reaction in an experimental task. We propose a new framework for a more adequate theoretical treatment of perception and action planning, in which perceptual contents and action plans are coded in a common representational medium by feature codes with distal reference. Perceived events (perceptions) and to-be-produced events (actions) are equally represented by integrated, task-tuned networks of feature codes – cognitive structures we call event codes. We give an overview of evidence from a wide variety of empirical domains, such as spatial stimulus-response compatibility, sensorimotor synchronization, and ideomotor action, showing that our main assumptions are well supported by the data.

One of the main functions that visual attention serves in perception and action is feature binding; that is, integrating all information that belongs to an object. The outcome of this integration has been called “object file”, a hypothetical memory structure coding episodic combinations of stimulus features. Action-oriented approaches to attention, however, suggest that such a purely perceptual or perceptually derived structure may be incomplete: If attention subserves action control, object files may include action-related information as well. That is, featurebinding may notbe restrictedto stimulus features butalso includefeatures of the responses made to the respective stimulus. In three experiments, subjects performed simple, already prepared left- or right-key responses (R1) to the mere presence of “Go” signals (S1) that varied randomly in form, colour and location. Shortly after the prepared response, a binary choice reaction (R2) to the form or colour of a second stimulus (S2) was made. The results show that benefits due to stimulus-feature repetitions (S1-S2) interact: Form repetition only facilitates performance if colour is also repeated, and repeating the relevantstimulus feature (form or colour) only facilitates performance if stimulus location is repeated. This can be taken as evidence for object-file formation. But there was also evidence for bindings between stimulus and response features: Repetition benefits associated with both the relevant stimulus feature and stimulus location depended on response repetition. This suggests that object files represent only one component of more complex “event files” that link information about stimulus and response aspects of an experienced episode.

Because of attentional limitations, the human visual system can process for awareness and response only a fraction of the input received. Lesion and functional imaging studies have identified frontal, temporal, and parietal areas as playing a major role in the attentional control of visual processing, but very little is known about how these areas interact to form a dynamic attentional network. We hypothesized that the network communicates by means of neural phase synchronization, and we used magnetoencephalography to study transient long-range interarea phase coupling in a well studied attentionally taxing dual-target task (attentional blink). Our results reveal that communication within the fronto-parieto-temporal attentional network proceeds via transient long-range phase synchronization in the beta band. Changes in synchronization reflect changes in the attentional demands of the task and are directly related to behavioral performance. Thus, we show how attentional limitations arise from the way in which the subsystems of the attentional network interact.