Dynamic structure of joint-action stimulus-response activity

TY - JOUR

T1 - Dynamic structure of joint-action stimulus-response activity

AU - Malone, MaryLauren

AU - Castillo, Ramon D.

AU - Kloos, Heidi

AU - Holden, John G.

AU - Richardson, Michael J.

N1 - Copyright the Author(s) 2014. Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s and according to publisher conditions. For further rights please contact the publisher. Previously published in Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2013), Markus Knauff; Michael Pauen; Natalie Sebanz and Ipke Wachsmuth (eds), p. 966-971. ISBN: 9781629930817

PY - 2014

Y1 - 2014

N2 - The mere presence of a co-actor can influence an individual’s response behavior. For instance, a social Simon effect has been observed when two individuals perform a Go/No-Go response to one of two stimuli in the presence of each other, but not when they perform the same task alone. Such effects are argued to provide evidence that individuals co-represent the task goals and the to-be-performed actions of a co-actor. Motivated by the complex-systems approach, the present study was designed to investigate an alternative hypothesis — that such joint-action effects are due to a dynamical (time-evolving) interpersonal coupling that operates to perturb the behavior of socially situated actors. To investigate this possibility, participants performed a standard Go/No-Go Simon task in joint and individual conditions. The dynamic structure of recorded reaction times was examined using fractal statistics and instantaneous cross-correlation. Consistent with our hypothesis that participants responding in a shared space would become behaviorally coupled, the analyses revealed that reaction times in the joint condition displayed decreased fractal structure (indicative of interpersonal perturbation processes modulating ongoing participant behavior) compared to the individual condition, and were more correlated across a range of time-scales compared to the reaction times of pseudo-pair controls. Collectively, the findings imply that dynamic processes might underlie social stimulus-response compatibility effects and shape joint cognitive processes in general.

AB - The mere presence of a co-actor can influence an individual’s response behavior. For instance, a social Simon effect has been observed when two individuals perform a Go/No-Go response to one of two stimuli in the presence of each other, but not when they perform the same task alone. Such effects are argued to provide evidence that individuals co-represent the task goals and the to-be-performed actions of a co-actor. Motivated by the complex-systems approach, the present study was designed to investigate an alternative hypothesis — that such joint-action effects are due to a dynamical (time-evolving) interpersonal coupling that operates to perturb the behavior of socially situated actors. To investigate this possibility, participants performed a standard Go/No-Go Simon task in joint and individual conditions. The dynamic structure of recorded reaction times was examined using fractal statistics and instantaneous cross-correlation. Consistent with our hypothesis that participants responding in a shared space would become behaviorally coupled, the analyses revealed that reaction times in the joint condition displayed decreased fractal structure (indicative of interpersonal perturbation processes modulating ongoing participant behavior) compared to the individual condition, and were more correlated across a range of time-scales compared to the reaction times of pseudo-pair controls. Collectively, the findings imply that dynamic processes might underlie social stimulus-response compatibility effects and shape joint cognitive processes in general.

U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0089032

DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0089032

M3 - Article

VL - 9

SP - 1

EP - 7

JO - PLoS ONE

T2 - PLoS ONE

JF - PLoS ONE

SN - 1932-6203

IS - 2

M1 - e89032

ER -