Two Trackers Are Better than One: Information about the Co-actor's Actions and Performance Scores Contribute to the Collective Benefit in a Joint Visuospatial Task.

Basil Wahn,Alan Kingstone,Peter König

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00669

Abstract

When humans collaborate, they often distribute task demands in order to reach a higher performance compared to performing the same task alone (i.e., a collective benefit). Here, we tested to what extent receiving information about the actions of a co-actor, performance scores, or receiving both types of information impacts the collective benefit in a collaborative multiple object tracking task. In a between-subject design, pairs of individuals jointly tracked a subset of target objects among several moving distractor objects on a computer screen for a 100 trials. At the end of a trial, pairs received performance scores (Experiment 1), information about their partner's target selections (Experiment 2), or both types of information (Experiment 3). In all experiments, the performance of the pair exceeded the individual performances and the simulated performance of two independent individuals combined. Initially, when receiving both types of information (Experiment 3), pairs achieved the highest performance and divided task demands most efficiently compared to the other two experiments. Over time, performances and the ability to divide task demands for pairs receiving a single type of information converged with those receiving both, suggesting that pairs' coordination strategies become equally effective over time across experiments. However, pairs' performances never reached a theoretical limit of performance in all experiments. For distributing task demands, members of a pair predominantly used a left-right division of labor strategy (i.e., the leftmost targets were tracked by one co-actor while the rightmost targets were tracked by the other co-actor). Overall, findings of the present study suggest that receiving information about actions of a co-actor, performance scores, or receiving both enables pairs to devise effective division of labor strategies in a collaborative visuospatial task. However, when pairs had both types of information available, the formation of division of labor strategies was facilitated, indicating that pairs benefited the most from having both types of information available (i.e., actions about the co-actor and performance scores). Findings are applicable to circumstances in which humans need to perform collaborative visuospatial tasks that are time-critical and/or only allow a very limited exchange of information between co-actors.

Highlights

In everyday life, humans often perform tasks collaboratively that otherwise would be too difficult or cumbersome to perform alone
We investigated how receiving information about actions of a co-actor, performance scores, or both contribute to the collective benefit in a collaborative visuospatial task
In contrast to earlier studies that did not experimentally manipulate the availability of these two types of information (Brennan et al, 2008; Brennan and Enns, 2015; Wahn et al, 2016c), we systematically varied whether members of a pair received performance scores, only information about the actions of their co-actor, or both

Summary

Introduction

Humans often perform tasks collaboratively that otherwise would be too difficult or cumbersome to perform alone. When two people are searching for a friend in a large crowd, one person may focus his search on the left half of a crowd while the other person searches the right half of the crowd (Brennan et al, 2008) Such a distribution of task demands between coactors enables groups to reach a higher performance than their individual performances (i.e., a collective benefit) (Brennan et al, 2008; Bahrami et al, 2010). This work has converged on the conclusion that several factors may influence if, and to what extent, groups outperform individuals (Knoblich and Jordan, 2003; Brennan et al, 2008; Bahrami et al, 2010)

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