Joint Task Performance Research Articles

The State of the Art of Diagnostic Multiparty Eye Tracking in Synchronous Computer-Mediated Collaboration.

In recent years, innovative multiparty eye tracking setups have been introduced to synchronously capture eye movements of multiple individuals engaged in computer-mediated collaboration. Despite its great potential for studying cognitive processes within groups, the method was primarily used as an interactive tool to enable and evaluate shared gaze visualizations in remote interaction. We conducted a systematic literature review to provide a comprehensive overview of what to consider when using multiparty eye tracking as a diagnostic method in experiments and how to process the collected data to compute and analyze group-level metrics. By synthesizing our findings in an integrative conceptual framework, we identified fundamental requirements for a meaningful implementation. In addition, we derived several implications for future research, as multiparty eye tracking was mainly used to study the correlation between joint attention and task performance in dyadic interaction. We found multidimensional recurrence quantification analysis, a novel method to quantify group-level dynamics in physiological data, to be a promising procedure for addressing some of the highlighted research gaps. In particular, the computation method enables scholars to investigate more complex cognitive processes within larger groups, as it scales up to multiple data streams.

Collaborative Learning Technologies in Teaching Preschool Twins

This paper focuses on applying collaborative learning technologies in teaching preschool twins and reveals the role of collaborative learning in the formation of twins’ self-awareness. At the ascertaining stage of the experiment, 100 twins of preschool age took part. At the formative stage of the experiment, 16 preschoolers took part. At the formative stage of the experiment, an empirical assessment was carried out based on empirical indicators of the process and result of joint task performance by twins before and after participation in the formative experiment. An empirical study of the peculiarities of intrapair interaction in collaborative activities of preschool twins has shown effects that are a consequence of the twin situation. The use of collaborative learning in the psychological and pedagogical support of preschool twins has allowed obtaining positive results expressed in an increase in self-esteem, motivation for cooperation, and a decrease in aggressiveness and rivalry in a pair of twins.

Action prediction modulates self–other integration in joint action

People often coordinate actions with others, requiring an adjustable amount of self–other integration between actor’s and co-actor’s actions. Previous research suggests that such self–other integration (indexed by the joint Simon effect) is enhanced by agent similarity of the co-actor (e.g., high in intentionality). In this study, we aimed to extend this line of research by testing whether experiencing agency over a co-actor’s actions (vicarious agency) and/or action prediction strengthens the joint Simon effect. For this purpose, we manipulated experienced agency by varying the experienced control over a co-actor’s actions (Experiment 1), and action prediction regarding the co-actor’s actions (Experiment 2). Vicarious agency could effectively be induced, but did not modulate the size of the joint Simon effect. The joint Simon effect was decreased when the co-actor’s actions were unpredictable (vs. predictable) during joint task performance. These findings suggest social agency can be induced and effectively measured in joint action. Action prediction can act as an effective agency cue modulating the amount of self–other integration in joint action.

The Way We Make Each Other Feel: Relational Affect and Joint Task Performance

When two people work closely together to perform a task interdependently, do the emotions they elicit in each other matter for their joint performance? If so, which emotions matter most, and does p...

Losing Touch: An Embodiment Perspective on Coordination in Robotic Surgery

Because new technologies allow new performances, mediations, representations, and information flows, they are often associated with changes in how coordination is achieved. Current coordination research emphasizes its situated and emergent nature, but seldom accounts for the role of embodied action. Building on a 25-month field study of the da Vinci robot, an endoscopic system for minimally invasive surgery, we bring to the fore the role of the body in how coordination was reconfigured in response to a change in technological mediation. Using the robot, surgeons experienced both an augmentation and a reduction of what they can do with their bodies in terms of haptic, visual, and auditory perception and manipulative dexterity. These bodily augmentations and reductions affected joint task performance and led to coordinative adaptations (e.g., spatial relocating, redistributing tasks, accommodating novel perceptual dependencies, and mounting novel responses) that, over time, resulted in reconfiguration of roles, including expanded occupational knowledge, emergence of new specializations, and shifts in status and boundaries. By emphasizing the importance of the body in coordination, this paper suggests that an embodiment perspective is important for explaining how and why coordination evolves following the introduction of a new technology.

Audiovisual Integration During Joint Action: No Effects for Motion Discrimination and Temporal Order Judgment Tasks.

In daily life, humans constantly process information from multiple sensory modalities (e.g., visual and auditory). Information across sensory modalities may (or may not) be combined to form the perception of a single event via the process of multisensory integration. Recent research has suggested that performing a spatial crossmodal congruency task jointly with a partner affects multisensory integration. To date, it has not been investigated whether multisensory integration in other crossmodal tasks is also affected by performing a task jointly. To address this point, we investigated whether joint task performance also affects perceptual judgments in a crossmodal motion discrimination task and a temporal order judgment task. In both tasks, pairs of participants were presented with auditory and visual stimuli that might or might not be perceived as belonging to a single event. Each participant in a pair was required to respond to stimuli from one sensory modality only (e.g., visual stimuli only). Participants performed both individual and joint conditions. Replicating earlier multisensory integration effects, we found that participants' perceptual judgments were significantly affected by stimuli in the other modality for both tasks. However, we did not find that performing a task jointly modulated these crossmodal effects. Taking this together with earlier findings, we suggest that joint task performance affects crossmodal results in a manner dependent on how these effects are quantified (i.e., via responses time or accuracy) and the specific task demands (i.e., whether tasks require processing stimuli in terms of location, motion, or timing).

The roles of action selection and actor selection in joint task settings

Studies on joint task performance have proposed that co-acting individuals co-represent the shared task context, which implies that actors integrate their co-actor’s task components into their own task representation as if they were all their own task. This proposal has been supported by results of joint tasks in which each actor is assigned a single response where selecting a response is equivalent to selecting an actor. The present study used joint task switching, which has previously shown switch costs on trials following the actor’s own trial (intrapersonal switch costs) but not on trials that followed the co-actor’s trial (interpersonal switch costs), suggesting that there is no task co-representation. We examined whether interpersonal switch costs can be obtained when action selection and actor selection are confounded as in previous joint task studies. The present results confirmed this prediction, demonstrating that switch costs can occur within a single actor as well as between co-actors when there is only a single response per actor, but not when there are two responses per actor. These results indicate that task co-representation is not necessarily implied even when effects occur across co-acting individuals and that how the task is divided between co-actors plays an important role in determining whether effects occur between co-actors.

Action-effect sharing induces task-set sharing in joint task switching

A central issue in the study of joint task performance has been one of whether co-acting individuals perform their partner’s part of the task as if it were their own. The present study addressed this issue by using joint task switching. A pair of actors shared two tasks that were presented in a random order, whereby the relevant task and actor were cued on each trial. Responses produced action effects that were either shared or separate between co-actors. When co-actors produced separate action effects, switch costs were obtained within the same actor (i.e., when the same actor performed consecutive trials) but not between co-actors (when different actors performed consecutive trials), implying that actors did not perform their co-actor’s part. When the same action effects were shared between co-actors, however, switch costs were also obtained between co-actors, implying that actors did perform their co-actor’s part. The results indicated that shared action effects induce task-set sharing between co-acting individuals.

Priority for one's own stimulus in joint performance: evidence from an event-related potential study.

To investigate priority of shared task representations (own vs. other) formed during joint task performance, event-related potentials were recorded while participants performed an auditory three-stimulus oddball task alone (individual condition) and with another participant (joint condition). Participants were required to discriminate between frequent standard tones and rare target tones, while ignoring nontargets assigned to a partner's action (i.e. no-go stimuli for one's own task performance). The parietal P3b was elicited for targets under both conditions. In contrast, P3b for nontargets was observed only in the joint condition, and in addition, it accompanied the frontal no-go P3. This implies that coactors share one another's task representations. Importantly, the emergence of P3b and no-go P3 for nontargets was delayed compared with P3b for targets, suggesting that shared task representations are serially applied to the stimulus processing and that one's own representations precede the other individual's representations.

Competitive Game Play Attenuates Self-Other Integration during Joint Task Performance.

Joint task performance is facilitated by sharing and integrating each other’s action representations. Research has shown that the amount of this so-called self-other integration depends on situational aspects related to the social context, including differences in the social relationship between co-acting individuals. There are indications that a cooperative relationship facilitates self-other integration while a competitive relationship results in more individualistic task performance. However, findings from previous studies in which the cooperative or competitive element was manipulated during task performance are inconsistent. Therefore, the present study aimed to manipulate the social relationship between two individuals prior to performing a social Simon task. This task is frequently used to measure self-other integration and distinction processes. A mixed-within-and-between-subjects design was used in which three groups of participants performed both a standard Simon task and a social Simon task after having played a Tetris game either individually, in cooperation with a co-actor, or in competition against another participant. Performance on the standard Simon task was not affected by the Tetris manipulation. However, a sustained effect of the induced cooperative versus competitive relationship was found on the social Simon Task. Less self-other integration was found in participants who had first played a competitive Tetris game compared to participants who had played a cooperative or solo version of the game. The current study thus demonstrates that an established cooperative or competitive relationship is sufficient to modulate the degree of self-other integration on subsequent joint task performance. Importantly, by using Tetris, attention to others’ actions was beneficial both during cooperative and competitive game play and can thus not explain the competition-induced reduction of self-other integration.

Seeing Minds in Others – Can Agents with Robotic Appearance Have Human-Like Preferences?

Ascribing mental states to non-human agents has been shown to increase their likeability and lead to better joint-task performance in human-robot interaction (HRI). However, it is currently unclear what physical features non-human agents need to possess in order to trigger mind attribution and whether different aspects of having a mind (e.g., feeling pain, being able to move) need different levels of human-likeness before they are readily ascribed to non-human agents. The current study addresses this issue by modeling how increasing the degree of human-like appearance (on a spectrum from mechanistic to humanoid to human) changes the likelihood by which mind is attributed towards non-human agents. We also test whether different internal states (e.g., being hungry, being alive) need different degrees of humanness before they are ascribed to non-human agents. The results suggest that the relationship between physical appearance and the degree to which mind is attributed to non-human agents is best described as a two-linear model with no change in mind attribution on the spectrum from mechanistic to humanoid robot, but a significant increase in mind attribution as soon as human features are included in the image. There seems to be a qualitative difference in the perception of mindful versus mindless agents given that increasing human-like appearance alone does not increase mind attribution until a certain threshold is reached, that is: agents need to be classified as having a mind first before the addition of more human-like features significantly increases the degree to which mind is attributed to that agent.

Is it me or is it you? Behavioral and electrophysiological effects of oxytocin administration on self-other integration during joint task performance

The neuropeptide oxytocin has been associated with promoting various social behaviors in humans including cooperation and trust. Surprisingly little, however, is known about the possible role of oxytocin in processes required for social interactive behavior such as joint task performance. The current study investigated whether intranasal administration of oxytocin leads to increased self-other integration using a social Simon task. A placebo-controlled double-blind between-subjects design was used. Behavioral and EEG measures were obtained from 63 healthy male volunteers who either received 24 intranasal units (IU) oxytocin or a placebo while they performed the social Simon task in an individual and a joint/social context. The behavioral results demonstrated an enhanced Simon effect in the social context after oxytocin administration. At the electrophysiological level, the stimulus-locked N2 component, reflecting response conflict, was increased in the social compared to the individual context for Go trials, but only after oxytocin administration. The P3 component, reflecting response inhibition, was increased for social compared to individual contexts, irrespective of condition. Both the behavioral and N2 findings suggest that oxytocin enhances self-other integration. While more inhibition is needed in the social context, this process seems less sensitive to changes in self-other integration. To conclude, the current study is the first to show oxytocin-induced modulations of processes that play a central role in joint task performance and thus importantly adds to our understanding of the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the diverse social effects of oxytocin.

EEG correlates of impaired self-other integration during joint-task performance in schizophrenia.

Deficits in a wide variety of social cognitive processes are well established in schizophrenia. However, research focusing on actual interacting individuals is surprisingly scarce. Problems in low-level processes such as self-other integration may importantly underlie often-reported higher-level deficits. The current study aimed at measuring possible disturbances in self-other integration in schizophrenia using both behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) measures. Sixteen healthy controls and fifteen schizophrenia patients performed a social Simon task in both a joint and an individual setting. Behaviorally, patients showed general slower reaction times, but comparable self-other integration as reflected in the social Simon effect. The ERP results for the healthy controls revealed increased no-go P3 amplitudes in the joint compared with the individual setting. Crucially, patients did not show this increase in no-go P3 amplitude. In line with previous research, the present ERP findings demonstrate that healthy volunteers needed more effort to inhibit their responses in the joint compared with the individual setting. Patients however, showed altered self-other integration when they had to withhold their responses while their co-actor had to act. These outcomes indicate that schizophrenia patients have deficits in low-level processes required for successful joint action.

Spatial parameters at the basis of social transfer of learning.

Recent research indicates that practicing on a joint spatial compatibility task with an incompatible stimulus-response mapping affects subsequent joint Simon task performance, eliminating the social Simon effect. It has been well established that in individual contexts, for transfer of learning to occur, participants need to practice an incompatible association between stimulus and response positions. The mechanisms underlying transfer of learning in joint task performance are, however, less well understood. The present study was aimed at assessing the relative contribution of 3 different spatial relations characterizing the joint practice context: stimulus-response, stimulus-participant, and participant-response relations. In 3 experiments, the authors manipulated the stimulus-response, stimulus-participant, and response-participant associations. We found that learning from the practice task did not transfer to the subsequent task when during practice stimulus-response associations were spatially incompatible and stimulus-participant associations were compatible (Experiment 1). However, a transfer of learning was evident when stimulus-participant associations were spatially incompatible. This occurred both when response-participant associations were incompatible (Experiment 2) and when they were compatible (Experiment 3). These results seem to support an agent corepresentation account of correspondence effects emerging in joint settings since they suggest that, in social contexts, critical to obtain transfer-of-learning effects is the spatial relation between stimulus and participant positions while the spatial relation between stimulus and response positions is irrelevant.

Action hypersensitivity: Disturbed self-other integration in schizophrenia

Event Abstract Back to Event Action hypersensitivity: Disturbed self-other integration in schizophrenia Javier De La Asuncion1, Jean-Philippe Van Dijck1, 2*, Manuel Morrens1, Bernard Sabbe1 and Ellen De Bruijn1 1 University of Antwerp, Collaborative Antwerp Psychiatric Research Institute (CAPRI), Belgium 2 Ghent University, Experimental Psychology, Belgium It is well known that schizophrenia is characterized by a wide variety of social cognitive deficits. Typically these deficits in social cognition are believed to account for a wide variety of delusions and hallucinations. Problems in low-level social processes such as self-other integration may underlie these higher-level deficits. Research focusing on actual interacting individuals is scarce and to our knowledge, only one study investigated self-other integration in schizophrenia during a joint setting in schizophrenic patients. Using a spatial variant of the social Simon task, where the to-be categorized stimuli were triangles pointing towards the left or right, it has been demonstrated that schizophrenic patients do not show a social Simon effect, suggesting that self-other integration is absent (Liepelt et al., 2012). Importantly however, schizophrenia is also characterized by deficits in spatial cognition, making it likely that the nature of the stimuli hindered a proper measurement of the social Simon effect. In two experiments, we further investigated self-other integration in schizophrenia using a non-spatial variant of the social Simon task with colors. During the first experiment, 16 healthy controls and 15 schizophrenia patients performed a social Simon in both a joint and an individual (go/nogo) setting. Patients showed an enlarged Simon effect in the joint setting that could not be attributed to general slowing. In Experiment 2, the social nature of this enlarged effect was further investigated. For this purpose, 29 healthy controls and 35 schizophrenia patients performed a social and a regular Simon task. Here again, a selective enlargement of the Simon effect in the social condition was observed. These outcomes indicate that schizophrenia patients have deficits in low-level processes required for successful joint action, but in contrast to previous research, these observations suggest that self-other integration deficits in these patients are merely the result of hypersensitivity towards the social environment in a way that it affects their own action planning during joint task performance. References Liepelt. R., et al. (2012). Action blind: Disturbed self-other integration in schizophrenia. Neuropsychologia, 50, 3775-3780. Keywords: social cognition, Schizophrenia, Social Simon effect, Self-other integration, Action Planning Conference: Belgian Brain Council 2014 MODULATING THE BRAIN: FACTS, FICTION, FUTURE, Ghent, Belgium, 4 Oct - 4 Oct, 2014. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Clinical Neuroscience Citation: De La Asuncion J, Van Dijck J, Morrens M, Sabbe B and De Bruijn E (2014). Action hypersensitivity: Disturbed self-other integration in schizophrenia. Conference Abstract: Belgian Brain Council 2014 MODULATING THE BRAIN: FACTS, FICTION, FUTURE. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2014.214.00079 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 01 Jul 2014; Published Online: 02 Sep 2014. * Correspondence: Dr. Jean-Philippe Van Dijck, Ghent University, Experimental Psychology, Ghent, 9000, Belgium, jeanphilippe.vandijck@ugent.be Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Javier De La Asuncion Jean-Philippe Van Dijck Manuel Morrens Bernard Sabbe Ellen De Bruijn Google Javier De La Asuncion Jean-Philippe Van Dijck Manuel Morrens Bernard Sabbe Ellen De Bruijn Google Scholar Javier De La Asuncion Jean-Philippe Van Dijck Manuel Morrens Bernard Sabbe Ellen De Bruijn PubMed Javier De La Asuncion Jean-Philippe Van Dijck Manuel Morrens Bernard Sabbe Ellen De Bruijn Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

When co-action eliminates the Simon effect: disentangling the impact of co-actor's presence and task sharing on joint-task performance

This study aimed at assessing whether the mere belief of performing a task with another person, who is in charge of the complementary part of the task, is sufficient for the so-called joint Simon effect to occur. In all three experiments of the study, participants sat alone in a room and underwent two consecutive Go/NoGo tasks that were identical except for the instructions. In Experiment 1, participants performed the task first individually (baseline task), and then either co-acting with another person who responded from an unknown location to the NoGo stimuli (joint task) or imaging themselves responding to the NoGo stimuli (imaginative task). Relative to the baseline, the instructions of the imaginative task made the Simon effect occur, while those of the joint task were ineffective in eliciting the effect. This result suggests that sharing a task with a person who is known to be in charge of the complementary task, but is not physically present, is not sufficient to induce the representation of an alternative response able to produce interference, which happens instead when the instructions explicitly require to imagine such a response. Interestingly, we observed that when the Simon effect was already present in the baseline task (i.e., when the response alternative to the Go response was represented in the individual task due to non-social factors), it disappeared in the joint task. We propose that, when no information about the co-actor's position is available, the division of labor between the participant and co-actor allows participants to filter out the possible (incidental) representation of the alternative response from their task representation, thus eliminating potential sources of interference. This account is supported by the results of Experiments 2 and 3 and suggests that under certain circumstances task-sharing may reduce the interference produced by the irrelevant information, rather than increase it.

Action blind: Disturbed self-other integration in schizophrenia

Recent research using individual task settings suggests that a major problem in schizophrenia is a dysfunctional theory of mind system leading to false mental state attributions. However, if a more low-level deficit to integrate own and other's actions (action blindness) is present in schizophrenia is still unknown. Using a Social Simon task, we tested if schizophrenia patients have a deficit in self-other integration. Further, we tested for a possible genetic bias of this dysfunction by studying clinically unaffected first-degree relatives of schizophrenia patients. While schizophrenia patients showed no Social Simon effect, we found a reliable Social Simon effect in healthy participants and first-degree relatives of schizophrenia patients. Joint task performance differed statistically between patients and healthy controls. We did not find any differences in the size of the Social Simon effects of relatives and healthy controls. The present findings suggest that schizophrenia patients have severe problems with self-other integration, which may lead to problems in social interactions. Since first-degree relatives of schizophrenia patients showed a reliable Social Simon effect, the evidence for a genetic bias of this social dysfunction in schizophrenia however is weak.

Between-brain coherence during joint n-back task performance: A two-person functional near-infrared spectroscopy study

The present study aimed to step into two-person neuroscience by investigating the hemodynamic correlates of between-brain connectivity during joint task performance. To test this approach, wireless functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) was used to record brain signals during performance of a dual n-back task simultaneously in paired players as compared to single players.Evaluating functional connectivity between the paired players’ brains using wavelet transform coherence (WTC) analysis revealed (1) a significant increase in between-brain coherence during joint task performance as compared to baseline condition. These patterns were observed in two frequency bands, i.e. in the heart rate (HR) frequency and in low-frequency oscillations (LFOs). (2) Averaged hemodynamic responses revealed larger responses in total hemoglobin concentration changes [tHb] for the paired players as compared to the single players; in addition, within the paired players groups joint task performance revealed larger changes in [tHb] as compared to a rest period and to a baseline condition. (3) No increase in behavioral performance was found in the paired players as compared to the single players.Our findings designate fNIRS as suitable tool for monitoring interpersonal performances between two subjects. The results show that two-person performance leads to relevant and significant effects, which are detectable using between-brain connectivity analysis. Using this approach can provide additional insight into interpersonal activation patterns not detectable using typical one-person experiments. Our study demonstrates the potential of simultaneously assessing cerebral hemodynamic responses for various two-person experimental paradigms and research areas where interpersonal performances are involved.

Morphometric gray matter differences of the medial frontal cortex influence the social Simon effect

Interacting with others plays a fundamental role in human life. Although several brain regions have recently been associated with complex cognitive control processes, surprisingly little is known about the structural correlates underlying cognitive control processes involved in social interactions. In the present study we used gray matter voxel-based morphometry (VBM) to investigate structural brain correlates of individual performance differences in a social Simon task. Here, two people share a Simon task, which requires each participant to respond to only one of two possible stimuli, rendering the paradigm a go-nogo task, so that a Simon effect - known as the Social Simon Effect (SSE) - is observable across both participants. Using a whole brain approach, we found that inter-individual differences in the SSE are negatively correlated with gray matter (GM) volume of the medial frontal cortex (MFC). The present data indicate that individuals with larger MFC GM volume were those with better conflict resolution in a social Simon task and vice versa. This brain-behavior relationship between cognitive control processes and individual GM volume differences might help to improve our understanding of social interactions in joint task performance.

Interpersonal and intrapersonal coordinative modes for joint and single task performance

In recent years, research in the field of social interactions has focused on the exploration of the coordinative structures that substantiate joint task performance. The current project explores whether interpersonal coordination during joint task performance gives rise to a joint coordinative structure across individuals, and whether such coordinative structures are affected by task demands. Principal component analysis (PCA) is used to identify relevant interpersonal and intrapersonal coordinative modes for the single and joint performance of a supra-postural task, which varied along its precision and role demands. In addition, cross-recurrence quantification analysis (CRQA) was combined with PCA in order to quantify the degree and stability of interpersonal coordination across intrapersonal coordinative modes. Results indicate that the composition and number of coordinative modes varied for joint compared to single performance, and that interpersonal coordination across the first coordinative mode increased in degree and stability for joint compared to single performance. Overall, these findings indicate that joint coordinative structures are affected by the nature of the task performed and the constraints it places on joint and single performance.