Making oneself predictable: Reduced temporal variability facilitates joint action coordination
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Type
Journal articleTitle / Series / Name
Experimental Brain ResearchPublication Volume
211Publication Issue
3-4Date
2011
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Show full item recordAbstract
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. IdPublisher link
http://www.springerlink.com/content/d721036078g8241v/identifiers
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-011-2706-zae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-011-2706-z
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