Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

To help others, we need to infer one’s goal and intention and make an action which complements one’s action yet to meet the underlying goal. In this study, we consider the computational mechanism how a person can infer the other’s intention and goal from his or her action, which is not completed or fails to meet the goal. As a minimal motor control task toward a goal, we analyzed single-link pendulum control tasks and its variation. By analyzing two types of pendulum control tasks, we show that a sort of fractal dimension of movements is characteristic of the difference in the underlying motor controllers. Further, using the fractal dimension as a criterion of similarity between movements, we show that the simulated pendulum controller can make an action toward the goal, toward which other’s incomplete action was made, but was not observable in behavior due to its failure.