The mere presence of a co-actor can influence an individual’s response behavior. For instance, a social Simon effect has been observed when two individuals perform a Go/No-Go response to one of two stimuli in the presence of each other, but not when they perform the same task alone. Such effects are argued to provide evidence that individuals co-represent the task goals and the to-be-performed actions of a co-actor. Motivated by the complex-systems approach, the present study was designed to investigate an alternative hypothesis — that such joint-action effects are due to a dynamical (time-evolving) interpersonal coupling that operates to perturb the behavior of socially situated actors. To investigate this possibility, participants performed a standard Go/No-Go Simon task in joint and individual conditions. The dynamic structure of recorded reaction times was examined using fractal statistics and instantaneous cross-correlation. Consistent with our hypothesis that participants responding in a shared space would become behaviorally coupled, the analyses revealed that reaction times in the joint condition displayed decreased fractal structure (indicative of interpersonal perturbation processes modulating ongoing participant behavior) compared to the individual condition, and were more correlated across a range of time-scales compared to the reaction times of pseudo-pair controls. Collectively, the findings imply that dynamic processes might underlie social stimulus-response compatibility effects and shape joint cognitive processes in general.

No abstract

The current study investigated whether the influence of available task constraints on power-law scaling might be moderated by a participant’s task intention. Participants performed a simple rhythmic movement task with the intention of controlling either movement period or amplitude, either with or without an experimental stimulus designed to constrain period. In the absence of the stimulus, differences in intention did not produce any changes in power-law scaling. When the stimulus was present, however, a shift toward more random fluctuations occurred in the corresponding task dimension, regardless of participants’ intentions. More importantly, participants’ intentions interacted with available task constraints to produce an even greater shift toward random variation when the task dimension constrained by the stimulus was also the dimension the participant intended to control. Together, the results suggest that intentions serve to more tightly constrain behavior to existing environmental constraints, evidenced by changes in the fractal scaling of task performance.

No abstract

No abstract