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Making oneself predictable: Reduced temporal variability facilitates joint action coordination
Editors
Title / Series / Name
Experimental Brain Research
Publication Volume
211
Publication Issue
3-4
Pages
Editors
Keywords
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14018/10662
Abstract
Performing joint actions often requires precise temporal coordination of individual actions. The present study investigated how people coordinate their actions at discrete points in time when continuous or rhythmic information about others' actions is not available. In particular, we tested the hypothesis that making oneself predictable is used as a coordination strategy. Pairs of participants were instructed to coordinate key presses in a two-choice reaction time task, either responding in synchrony (Experiments 1 and 2) or in close temporal succession (Experiment 3). Across all experiments, we found that coactors reduced the variability of their actions in the joint context compared with the same task performed individually. Correlation analyses indicated that the less variable the actions were, the better was interpersonal coordination. The relation between reduced variability and improved coordination performance was not observed when pairs of participants performed independent tasks next to each other without intending to coordinate. These findings support the claim that reducing variability is used as a coordination strategy to achieve predictability. Id
Topic
Publisher
Place of Publication
Type
Journal article
Date
2011
Language
ISBN
Identifiers
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-011-2706-z