Abstract
Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of coaction on saccadic and manual responses. Participants performed the experiments either in a solitary condition or in a group of coactors who performed the same tasks at the same time. In Experiment 1, participants completed a pro- and antisaccade task where they were required to make saccades towards (prosaccades) or away (antisaccades) from a peripheral visual stimulus. In Experiment 2, participants performed a visual discrimination task that required both making a saccade towards a peripheral stimulus and making a manual response in reaction to the stimulus’s orientation. The results showed that performance of stimulus-driven responses was independent of the social context, while volitionally controlled responses were delayed by the presence of coactors. These findings are in line with studies assessing the effect of attentional load on saccadic control during dual-task paradigms. In particular, antisaccades – but not prosaccades – were influenced by the type of social context. Additionally, the number of coactors present in the group had a moderating effect on both saccadic and manual responses. The results support an attentional view of social influences.
Highlights
Imagine writing an exam in a large hall where row after row of other students take the same test
If this were the case, social presence ought to affect performance in line with what previous studies report about saccadic control and attentional load
We propose that social presence mainly influences participants’ capacity to generate controlled saccades rather than their ability to inhibit automatic saccades. This hypothesis is reinforced by the fact that Stuyven et al (2000) showed that increased attentional load prolonged the latency of controlled saccades even when there was no need to inhibit automatic behaviour as in the antisaccade
Summary
Imagine writing an exam in a large hall where row after row of other students take the same test. A metaanalysis of 241 studies found that the presence of others improves the speed at which simple tasks are completed but decreases the speed for complex tasks (Bond & Titus, 1983). These social effects have been thoroughly studied, their causes are still debated (Guerin, 2010). Explanations of how social presence affects task performance often refer to attentional and cognitive processes, so in this study we set out to test two major social theories with eye movement paradigms that reveal attentional and cognitive processes
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