Abstract
Everyday tasks, such as selecting routes when driving or preparing meals require making sequences of embodied decisions, in which planning and action processes are intertwined. In this study, we address how people make sequential embodied decisions, requiring balancing between immediate affordances and long-term utilities of alternative action plans. We designed a novel game-like task in which participants controlled an avatar tasked with “crossing rivers”, by jumping across rocks. The task permitted us to assess how participants balanced between immediate jumping affordances (“safe” versus “risky” jumps) and the utility (length) of the ensuing paths to the goal. Behavioral and computational analyses revealed that participants planned ahead their path to the goal rather than simply focusing on the most immediate jumping affordances. Furthermore, embodied components of the task influenced participants’ decision strategies, as evident by the fact that participants’ current direction of movement influenced their choice between safe and risky jumps. We also found that participants showed (pre)planning before making the first jump, but they continued deliberating during it, with movement speed decreasing at decision points and when approaching them. Finally, computational modeling indicates that farsighted participants who assigned greater weight to the utility of future jumps showed a better performance, highlighting the usefulness of planning in embodied settings. Our findings underscore the importance of studying decision-making and planning in ecologically valid, embodied settings, providing new insights into the interplay between action and cognition in real-world planning-while-acting scenarios.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
