Short article Intention and attention in ideomotor learning

Human actions may be carried out in response to exogenous stimuli (stimulus based) or they may be selected endogenously on the basis of the agent’s intentions (intention based). We studied the functional differences between these two types of action during action–effect (ideomotor) learning. Participants underwent an acquisition phase, in which each key-press (left/right) triggered a specific tone (low pitch/high pitch) either in a stimulus-based or in an intention-based action mode. Consistent with previous findings, we demonstrate that auditory action effects gain the ability to prime their associated responses in a later test phase only if the actions were selected endogenously during acquisition phase. Furthermore, we show that this difference in ideomotor learning is not due to different attentional demands for stimulus-based and intention-based actions. Our results suggest that ideomotor learning depends on whether or not the action is selected in the intention-based action mode, whereas the amount of attention devoted to the action–effect is less important.