Collaborating in spatial tasks: Partners adapt the perspective of their descriptions, coordination strategies, and memory representations.

The partner’s viewpoint influences spatial descriptions and, when strongly emphasized, spatial memories as well. We examined whether partnerspecific information affects the representations people spontaneously construct, the description strategies they spontaneously select, and the representations their collaborating partner constructs based on these descriptions. Directors described to a misaligned Matcher arrays learned while either knowing the Matcher’s viewpoint or not. Knowing the Matcher’s viewpoint led to distinctive processing in spatial judgments and a rotational bias in array drawings. Directors’ descriptions reflected strategic choices, suggesting that partners considered each other’s computational demands. Such strategies were effective as reflected by the number of conversational turns partners took to coordinate. Matchers represented both partners’ viewpoints in memory, with the Directors’ descriptions predicting the facilitated perspective. Thus, partners behave contingently in spatial tasks to optimize their coordination: the availability of the partner’s viewpoint influences one’s memory and description strategies, which in turn influence the partner’s memory

Attenuating information in spoken communication: For the speaker, or for the addressee?

Speakers tend to attenuate information that is predictable or repeated. To what extent is this done automatically and egocentrically, because it is easiest for speakers themselves, and to what extent is it driven by the informational needs of addressees? In 20 triads of naive subjects, speakers told the same Road Runner cartoon story twice to one addressee and once to another addressee, counterbalanced for order (Addressee1/Addressee1/ Addressee2 or Addressee1/Addressee2/Addressee1). Stories retold to the same (old) addressees were attenuated compared to those retold to new addressees; this was true for events mentioned, number of words, and amount of detail. Moreover, lexically identical expressions by the same speaker were more intelligible to another group of listeners when the expressions had been addressed to new addressees than when they had been addressed to old addressees. We conclude that speakers’ attenuating of information in spontaneous discourse is driven at least in part by addressees. Such audience design is computationally feasible when it can be guided by a ‘‘one-bit” model (my audience has heard this before, or not)

Social and representational cues jointly influence spatial perspective-taking.

We examined how social cues (the conversational partner’s viewpoint) and representational ones (the intrinsic structure of a spatial layout) jointly shape people’s spatial memory representations and their subsequent descriptions. In 24 pairs, Directors studied an array with a symmetrical structure while either knowing their Matcher’s subsequent viewpoint or not. During the subsequent description of the array, the array’s intrinsic structure was aligned with the Director, the Matcher, or neither partner. According to memory tests preceding descriptions, Directors who had studied the array while aligned with its structure were more likely to use its orientation as an organizing direction. Directors who had studied the array while misaligned with its structure used its orientation more frequently as an organizing orientation when knowing that the Matcher would be aligned with it, but used their own viewpoint more frequently as an organizing direction when not knowing the Matcher’s viewpoint. Directors also adapted their descriptions strategically, using more egocentric expressions when aligned with the intrinsic structure and more partner-centered expressions when their Matchers were the ones aligned with the structure, even when this information wasn’t available in advance. These findings suggest that speakers are guided by converging social and representational cues to adapt flexibly the organization of their memories and the perspectives of their descriptions

Speakers adapt gestures to addressees' knowledge: Implications for models of co-speech gesture.

Are gesturing and speaking shaped by similar communicative constraints? In an experiment, we teased apart communicative from cognitive constraints upon multiple dimensions of speech-accompanying gestures in spontaneous dialogue. Typically, speakers attenuate old, repeated or predictable information but not new information. Our study distinguished what was new or old for speakers from what was new or old for (and shared with) addressees. In 20 groups of 3 naive participants, speakers retold the same Road Runner cartoon story twice to one addressee and once to another. We compared the distribution of gesture types, and the gestures’ size and iconic precision across retellings. Speakers gestured less frequently in stories retold to Old Addressees than New Addressees. Moreover, the gestures they produced in stories retold to Old Addressees were smaller and less precise than those retold to New Addressees, although these were attenuated over time as well. Consistent with our previous findings about speaking, gesturing is guided by both speaker-based (cognitive) and addressee-based (communicative) constraints that affect both planning and motoric execution. We discuss the implications for models of co-speech gesture production

What's so difficult with adopting imagined perspectives?

Research on spatial cognition suggests that transformation processes and/or spatial conflicts may influence performance on mental perspective-taking tasks. However, conflicting findings have complicated our understanding about the processes involved in perspectivetaking, particularly those giving rise to angular disparity effects, whereby performance worsens as the imagined perspective adopted deviates from one’s actual perspective. Based on data from experiments involving mental perspective- taking in immediate and remote spatial layouts, we propose here a novel account for the difficulty with perspective-taking. According to this account, the main difficulty lies in maintaining an imagined perspective in working memory, especially in the presence of salient sensorimotor information

The protagonist's first perspective influences the encoding of spatial information in narratives

Three experiments examined the first-perspective alignment effect that is observed when retrieving spatial information from memory about described environments. Participants read narratives that described the viewpoint of a protagonist in fictitious environments and then pointed to the memorized locations of described objects from imagined perspectives. Results from Experiments 1 and 2 showed that performance was best when participants responded from the protagonist’s first perspective even though object locations were described from a different perspective. In Experiment 3, in which participants were physically oriented with the perspective used to describe object locations, performance from that description perspective was better than that from the protagonist’s first perspective, which was, in turn, better than performance from other perspectives. These findings suggest that when reading narratives, people default to using a reference frame that is aligned with their own facing direction, although physical movement may facilitate retrieval from other perspectives

Integration of spatial relations across perceptual experiences.

People often carry out tasks that entail coordinating spatial information encoded in temporally and/or spatially distinct perceptual experiences. Much research has been conducted to determine whether such spatial information is integrated into a single spatial representation or whether it is kept in separate representations that can be related at the time of retrieval. Here, we review the existing literature on the integration of spatial information and present results from a new experiment aimed at examining whether locations encoded from different perspectives in the same physical environments are integrated into a single spatial representation. Overall, our findings, coupled with those from other studies, suggest that separate spatial representations are maintained in memory

When gestures show us the way: Co-speech gestures selectively facilitate navigation and spatial memory.

How does gesturing during route learning relate to subsequent spatial performance? We examined the relationship between gestures produced spontaneously while studying route directions and spatial representations of the navigated environment. Participants studied route directions, then navigated those routes from memory in a virtual environment, and finally had their memory of the environment assessed. We found that, for navigators with low spatial perspective-taking performance on the Spatial Orientation Test, more gesturing from a survey perspective predicted more accurate memory following navigation. Thus, co-thought gestures accompanying route learning relate to performance selectively, depending on the gesturers’ spatial ability and the perspective of their gestures. Survey gestures may help some individuals visualize an overall route that they can retain in memory

The conversational partner's perspective affects spatial memory and descriptions.

We examined whether people spontaneously represent the partner’s viewpoint in spatial memory when it is available in advance and whether they adapt their spontaneous descriptions accordingly. In 18 pairs, Directors studied arrays of objects while: (1) not knowing about having to describe the array to a Matcher, (2) knowing about the subsequent description, and (3) knowing the Matcher’s subsequent viewpoint, which was offset by 90, 135, or 180. In memory tests preceding descriptions, Directors represented the Matcher’s viewpoint when it was known during study, taking longer to imagine orienting to perspectives aligned with it and rotating their drawings of arrays toward it. Conversely, when Directors didn’t know their Matcher’s viewpoint, they encoded arrays egocentrically, being faster to imagine orienting to and to respond from perspectives aligned with their own. Directors adapted their descriptions flexibly, using partner-centered spatial expressions more frequently when misaligned by 90 and egocentric ones when misaligned by 135. Knowing their misalignment in advance helped partners recognize when descriptions would be most difficult for Directors (at 135) and to mutually agree on using their perspective. Thus, in collaborative tasks, people don’t rely exclusively on their spatial memory but also use other pertinent perceptual information (e.g., their misalignment from their partner) to assess the computational demands on each partner and select strategies that maximize the efficiency of communication

An Evaluation of Current Methodological Approaches for Game-Based Health Interventions

In this repository, we include the supplementary materials from a review in which we evaluate the extent to which recent health-based game intervention studies have improved from past criticisms around the game development process, its theoretical grounding, and its implementation in terms of research design. 26 published articles were reviewed for their theoretical grounding, their use of game mechanics, and their methodologies for the development and implementation of game-based interventions. Supplementary materials contain our coding documents, reliability coding, and the data collected from the articles for our analysis. All studies in this sample included more than one game mechanic, most studies grounded their interventions in psychological theory, and studies frequently used quantitative methods to determine intervention impact. In line with recommendations, the majority of studies used large sample sizes and applied their interventions in real-world settings. Despite these improvements, we identified areas of growth: future studies still need to utilize interdisciplinary teams, user-centered and iterative approaches, and standardize their reporting of intervention design components. We hope this review helps to inform the future of applied game design in health contexts