Order and disorder in everyday action: the roles of contention scheduling and supervisory attention

Abstract

This paper describes the contention scheduling/supervisory attentional system approach to action selection and uses this account to structure a survey of current theories of the control of action. The focus is on how such theories account for the types of error produced by some patients with frontal and/or left temporoparietal damage when attempting everyday tasks. Four issues, concerning both the theories and their accounts of everyday action breakdown, emerge: first, whether multiple control systems, each capable of controlling action in different situations, exist; second, whether different forms of damage at the neural level result in conceptually distinct disorders; third, whether semantic/conceptual knowledge of objects and actions can be dissociated from control mechanisms, and if so what computational principles govern sequential control; and fourth, whether disorders of everyday action should be attributed to a loss of semantic/conceptual knowledge, a malfunction of control, or some combination of the two.