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How do partner reactions affect task set selection: Specific imitation or abstract tasks?

Romy Müller1

  • 1Engineering Psychology and Applied Cognitive Research, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany.

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (2006)
|June 13, 2020
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Summary

Partner task imitation is not required for compatibility benefits in task selection. Even when partners perform different actions on distinct stimuli, abstract task representations can still influence performance.

Keywords:
Joint actionaction effectsco-representationselection conflicttask set selection

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Social Cognition
  • Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

  • Task set selection is easier when individuals anticipate a partner performing the same task.
  • This suggests that partners' performance characteristics are mentally represented.
  • The precise similarity required in partner actions for these compatibility effects remains unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the necessary level of partner action similarity for compatibility effects in task set selection.
  • To determine if complete imitation is required or if performing the same abstract task is sufficient.
  • To differentiate between insufficient abstract task overlap and excessive task difficulty.

Main Methods:

  • A joint picture-word interference paradigm was employed.
  • Participants performed either picture naming or word reading tasks.
  • A partner performed either the same or a competing task, with varying degrees of stimulus-response overlap across experiments.

Main Results:

  • Compatibility benefits were observed when the partner completely imitated the subject's actions (Experiment 1).
  • Compatibility effects were absent when the partner performed the same abstract task but on different stimuli, leading to different actions (Experiment 2).
  • Compatibility benefits re-emerged when Experiment 2 was replicated with a reduced stimulus set, suggesting task difficulty was a factor.

Conclusions:

  • A partner's abstract task representation can influence task set selection even without identical stimulus-response mappings.
  • Complete imitation of specific actions is not essential for compatibility benefits.
  • The findings highlight the flexibility of cognitive representations in social task coordination.