Spatial Representation in Sequential Action Organization of Weakly Constrained Everyday Activities

Abstract

The ability to organize and control routine sequential action is of major importance for successfully mastering everyday life and activities. Although previous research has started to uncover mechanisms and principles underlying human control of such activities, the possible influence of spatial aspects has not received sufficient attention. In this contribution we argue that human behavior organization relies heavily on spatial aspects in everyday activities such as setting the table. Employing a modeling approach, we examine the influence of distance, topology (containment), relational dependencies (strong spatial cognition), and dimensionality on action organization. The application of our model to one laboratory and one real world dataset reveals that all four aspects notably influence action organization in human table setting. Additional exploration of the model’s performance sheds further light on regionalization and dimensionality of human spatial representations.