The continuous dynamics of planning and acting in a virtually embodied task

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. Here, we address how people make sequential embodied decisions, requiring balancing between immediate affordances and long-term utilities of alternative action plans. We designed a virtually embodied 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” vs. “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 immediate jumping affordances. Furthermore, spatial and embodied components of the task influenced participants’ decision strategies, as participants’ current direction of movement and momentum influenced their choice between safe and risky jumps. Additionally, 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. 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. Finally, analyzing participants’ performance indicates that during the experiment, they become faster in moving and deciding but they do not change their overall strategy. Our findings underscore the importance of studying decision-making in ecologically valid, embodied settings, providing insights into the interplay between action and cognition in real-world planning-while-acting scenarios.