© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI: 10.1163/15685373-12342098 Journal of Cognition and Culture 13 (2013) 347–365 brill.com/jocc Prediction Error During Functional and Non-Functional Action Sequences: A Computational Exploration of Ritual and Ritualized Event Processing Kristoffer L. Nielboa , * and Jesper Sørensena , b a Department of the Study of Religion, Aarhus University, Tåsingegade 3, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark b MINDLab, Aarhus University, Tåsingegade 3, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark * Corresponding author, e-mail: kln@teo.au.dk Abstract By means of the computational approach the present study investigates the difference between observation of functional behaviour (i.e., actions involving necessary integration of subparts) and non-functional behaviour (i.e., actions lacking necessary integration of subparts) in terms of prediction error. Non-functionality in this proximal sense is a feature of many socio-cultural practices, such as those found in religious rituals private and social, as well as pathological practices, such as ritualized behaviour found among people suffering from Obsessive Compulsory Disorder (OCD). A recent behavioural study has shown that human subjects segment non- functional behaviour in a more fine-grained way than functional behaviour. This increase in segmentation rate implies that non-functionality elicits a stronger error signal. To further explore the implications, two computer simulations using simple recurrent networks were made and the results are presented in this article. The simulations show that non-functional action sequences do indeed increase prediction error, but that context representations, such as abstract goal information, can modulate the error signal considerably. It is also shown that the networks are sensitive to boundaries between sequences in both functional and non-functional actions. Keywords Ritualized behaviour, cultural rituals, computer simulation, prediction error, event perception Introduction During a single day, humans execute a considerable amount of action sequences. The majority of these will most likely be instrumental or functional in proximal terms (in an evolutionary model, non-functional action sequences might naturally serve a function, such as generating or maintaining group cohesion (e.g., Bulbulia, 2004; Alcorta and Sosis, 2005), but ultimate explanations