Simulating the Experiment on Tactile Delays

Abstract

Alongside the experiment that was described in the previous chapter, an ER simulation model of the kind presented earlier in this book was conducted. Agents were evolved to perform the same behaviour as the experimental participants, i.e., to catch objects through simulated tactile feedback, in the environment described. The results from the simulation, which were conducted to aid experimental design, data analysis and interpretation, were in parts published in (Rohde and Di Paolo, 2007). This chapter presents these simulation results and then revisits the data presented in the previous chapter, in order to see in how far the insights gained in the simulation model apply to the experimental data. The model generates descriptive variables and concepts that are then tested against the data. However, the most significant results from the simulation are conceptual insights about the meaning of delays in different kinds of sensorimotor loops (reflex-like, reactive and anticipatory). These will only be discussed at length in the following chapter 11, which evaluates the data from both the simulation model and the experiment in the light of the larger picture of embodied time cognition and time perception given in chapter 8.