The humanPerformer > resourceAssignmentExpression > formalExpression is the BPMN 2.0 way of handling the assignment of the task. This is quite verbose, that's why activiti offers a shorter way of doing this, using the activiti extension "activiti:assignee" attribute.
This (and more detailed explanation) can be found in the userguide (http://activiti.org/userguide/index.html#bpmnUserTask , section User Assignment).
Big difference between potentialOwner and humanPerformer is that humanPerformer determines assignee, while potentialOwner only determines which user/group can be an assignee...