Anticipatory behavioral control

Abstract

This contribution introduces the psychological learning framework of anticipatory behavioral control (ABC). Departing from the premise that almost all behavior of humans and higher animals is goal oriented, the framework proposes that (1) a voluntary action is preceded by a representation of the to-be-attained effect(s), (2) learning of such effect representations is triggered by the comparison of predicted and actual effects resulting in the primary learning of action-effect relations, (3) situational context is integrated secondarily, (4) action-effect representations are activated by the need or desire of an effect-related goal, and (5) conditionalized action-effect relations can also be activated by contingent stimuli. The framework is supported by a variety of experimental studies and an extensive literature survey.