Relevant for us? We-prioritization in cognitive processing

Humans are social by nature. We ask whether this social nature operates as a lens through which individuals process the world even in the absence of immediate interactions or explicit goals to collaborate. Is information that is potentially relevant to a group one belongs to (“We”) processed with priority over information potentially relevant to a group one does not belong to (“They”)? We conducted three experiments using a modified version of Sui, He, and Humphreys’ (2012) shape–label matching task. Participants were assigned to groups either via a common preference between assigned team members (Experiment 1) or arbitrarily (Experiment 2). In a third experiment, only personal pronouns were used. Overall, a processing benefit for we-related information (we-prioritization) occurred regardless of the type of group induction. A final experiment demonstrated that we-prioritization did not extend to other individual members of a short-term transitory group. We suggest that the results reflect an intrinsic predisposition to process information “relevant for us” with priority, which might feed into optimizing collaborative processes

It goes with the territory: Ownership across spatial boundaries.

Previous studies have shown that people are faster to process objects that they own as compared with objects that other people own. Yet object ownership is embedded within a social environment that has distinct and sometimes competing rules for interaction. Here we ask whether ownership of space can act as a filter through which we process what belongs to us. Can a sense of territory modulate the well-established benefits in information processing that owned objects enjoy? In 4 experiments participants categorized their own or another person’s objects that appeared in territories assigned either to themselves or to another. We consistently found that faster processing of self-owned than other-owned objects only emerged for objects appearing in the self-territory, with no such advantage in other territories. We propose that knowing whom spaces belong to may serve to define the space in which affordances resulting from ownership lead to facilitated processing

Observing joint action : coordination creates commitment

Previous research has shown that interpersonal coordination enhances pro-social attitudes and behavior. Here, we extend this research by investigating whether the degree of coordination observed in a joint action enhances the perception of individuals' commitment to the joint action. In four experiments, participants viewed videos of joint actions. In the low coordination condition, two agents made independent individual contributions to a joint action. In the high coordination condition, the individual contributions were tightly linked. Participants judged whether and for how long the observed agents would resist a tempting outside option and remain engaged in the joint action. The results showed that participants were more likely to expect agents to resist outside options when observing joint actions with a high degree of coordination. This indicates that observing interpersonal coordination is sufficient to enhance the perception of commitment to joint action

Giving a helping hand: effects of joint attention on mental rotation of body parts

Research on joint attention has addressed both the effects of gaze following and the ability to share representations. It is largely unknown, however, whether sharing attention also affects the perceptual processing of jointly attended objects. This study tested whether attending to stimuli with another person from opposite perspectives induces a tendency to adopt an allocentric rather than an egocentric reference frame. Pairs of participants performed a handedness task while individually or jointly attending to rotated hand stimuli from opposite sides. Results revealed a significant flattening of the performance rotation curve when participants attended jointly (experiment 1). The effect of joint attention was robust to manipulations of social interaction (cooperation versus competition, experiment 2), but was modulated by the extent to which an allocentric reference frame was primed (experiment 3). Thus, attending to objects together from opposite perspectives makes people adopt an allocentric rather than the default egocentric reference frame

Evidence for we-representations during joint action planning

Do people engaged in joint action form action plans that specify joint outcomes at the group level? EEG was recorded from pairs of participants who performed coordinated actions that could result in different postural configurations. To isolate individual and joint action planning processes, a pre-cue specified in advance the individual actions and/or the joint configuration. Participants had 1200 ms to prepare their actions. Then a Go cue specified all action parameters and participants performed a synchronized action as quickly as possible. Action onsets were shorter when the pre-cue specified the joint configuration, regardless of whether individual action was also specified. EEG analyses showed that specifying joint action parameters in advance reduced ambiguity in a structured joint action plan (reflected in the decrease of the amplitude of the P600) and helped with representing action goals and interpersonal coordination patterns in sensorimotor brain areas (reflected in increased alpha/mu suppression and CNV amplitudes). These results provide clear evidence that joint action is driven not only by action plans that specify individual contributions, but also by action plans that specify joint action outcomes at the group level

Crossmodal correspondences as common ground for joint action

When performing joint actions, people rely on common ground - shared information that provides the required basis for mutual understanding. Common ground can be based on people's interaction history or on knowledge and expectations people share, e.g., because they belong to the same culture or social class. Here, we suggest that people rely on yet another form of common ground, one that originates in their similarities in multisensory processing. Specifically, we focus on 'crossmodal correspondences' - nonarbitrary associations that people make between stimulus features in different sensory modalities, e.g., between stimuli in the auditory and the visual modality such as high-pitched sounds and small objects. Going beyond previous research that focused on investigating crossmodal correspondences in individuals, we propose that people can use these correspondences for communicating and coordinating with others. Initial support for our proposal comes from a communication game played in a public space (an art gallery) by pairs of visitors. We observed that pairs created nonverbal communication systems by spontaneously relying on 'crossmodal common ground'. Based on these results, we conclude that crossmodal correspondences not only occur within individuals but that they can also be actively used in joint action to facilitate the coordination between individuals. Copyright © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Comprehension of action sequences : The case of paper, scissors, rock

Bach, P., Knoblich, G., Friederici, A. D., & Prinz, W. (2001). Comprehension of action sequences: The case of paper, scissors, rock. In K. Stenning & J. D. Moore (Ed.), Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (S. 39-44). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Publisher PD

Chimpanzee coordination and potential communication in a two-touchscreen turn-taking game

This research was supported by the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013) / ERC grant agreement n° [609819], SOMICS.Recent years have seen a growing interest in the question of whether and how groups of nonhuman primates coordinate their behaviors for mutual benefit. On the one hand, it has been shown that chimpanzees in the wild and in captivity can solve various coordination problems. On the other hand, evidence of communication in the context of coordination problems is scarce. Here, we investigated how pairs of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) solved a problem of dynamically coordinating their actions for achieving a joint goal. We presented five pairs of chimpanzees with a turn-taking coordination game, where the task was to send a virtual target from one computer display to another using two touch-screens. During the joint practice of the game some subjects exhibited spontaneous gesturing. To address the question whether these gestures were produced to sustain coordination, we introduced a joint test condition in which we simulated a coordination break-down scenario: subjects appeared either unwilling or unable to return the target to their partner. The frequency of gesturing was significantly higher in these test trials than in the regular trials. Our results suggest that at least in some contexts chimpanzees can exhibit communicative behaviors to sustain coordination in joint action.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

The Sense of Commitment: A Minimal Approach

This paper provides a starting point for psychological research on the sense of commitment within the context of joint action. We begin by formulating three desiderata: to illuminate the motivational factors that lead agents to feel and act committed, to pick out the cognitive processes and situational factors that lead agents to sense that implicit commitments are in place, and to illuminate the development of an understanding of commitment in ontogeny. In order to satisfy these three desiderata, we propose a minimal framework, the core of which is an analysis of the minimal structure of situations which can elicit a sense of commitment. We then propose a way of conceptualizing and operationalizing the sense of commitment, and discuss cognitive and motivational processes which may underpin the sense of commitment

Human adults prefer to cooperate even when it is costly

Funding: This research was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program [FP7/2007-2013/ERC Grant 609819], project SOMICS.Joint actions are cooperative activities where humans coordinate their actions to achieve individual and shared goals. While the motivation to engage in joint action is clear when a goal cannot be achieved by individuals alone, we asked whether humans are motivated to act together even when acting together is not necessary and implies incurring additional costs compared to individual goal achievement. Using a utility-based empirical approach, we investigated the extent of humans' preference for joint action over individual action, when the instrumental costs of performing joint actions outweigh the benefits. The results of five experiments showed that human adults have a stable preference for joint action, even if individual action is more effective to achieve a certain goal. We propose that such preferences can be understood as ascribing additional reward value to performing actions together.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe