The influence of cognitive load and social context on co-representation in joint actions

Co-representation refers to the phenomenon where individuals integrate others' behaviors into their own representations during joint actions. The impact of cooperation and competition on co-representation has long been controversial. This study employed the joint Simon task to explore the influence of social context (cooperative vs. competitive) on co-representation under varying cognitive loads. The findings reveal a significant Simon effect in the solo Simon task group, cooperative group and competition group (Experiment 1), regardless of the presence of additional cognitive load, but not in the solo go-nogo task group (Experiment 2). However, Experiments 1 and 2 both showed that there was no significant interaction between social context and compatibility on RT. Moreover, there was no significant change in Simon effect under different cognitive loads in both cooperative group and competition group in Experiment 1 and 2. Our findings demonstrate that individuals maintain co-representation of co-actors' behaviors in both cooperative and competitive contexts. However, despite the additional cognitive load, individuals continue to co-represent others in both cooperation and competition, suggesting that the cognitive load introduced in current study is not sufficient to disrupt the co-representation. We discuss these findings in the context of the JSE's task co-representation theory and integrated social-cognitive accounts.