Abstract
How is coordination achieved in asymmetric joint actions where co-actors have unequal access to task information? Pairs of participants performed a non-verbal tapping task with the goal of synchronizing taps to different targets. We tested whether ‘Leaders’ knowing the target locations would support ‘Followers’ without this information. Experiment 1 showed that Leaders tapped with higher amplitude that also scaled with specific target distance, thereby emphasizing differences between correct targets and possible alternatives. This strategic communication only occurred when Leaders’ movements were fully visible, but not when they were partially occluded. Full visual information between co-actors also resulted in higher and more stable behavioral coordination than partial vision. Experiment 2 showed that Leaders’ amplitude adaptation facilitated target prediction by independent Observers. We conclude that fully understanding joint action coordination requires both representational (i.e., strategic adaptation) and dynamical systems (i.e., behavioral coupling) accounts.
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Notes
Three of the six sequences contained a repeating pattern of length 16; this had no effect on any of the measured variables and was therefore not included as a factor in the statistical analyses.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Veronica Romero for her help with data collection and Günther Knoblich for valuable comments. Michael Richardson’s effort on this project was partially supported by the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01GM105045. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
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Vesper, C., Richardson, M.J. Strategic communication and behavioral coupling in asymmetric joint action. Exp Brain Res 232, 2945–2956 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-014-3982-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-014-3982-1