Group benefits in joint perceptual tasks—a review

Abstract

In daily life, humans often perform perceptual tasks together to reach a shared goal. In these situations, individuals may collaborate (e.g., by distributing task demands) to perform the task better than when the task is performed alone (i.e., attain a group benefit). In this review, we identify the factors influencing if, and to what extent, a group benefit is attained and provide a framework of measures to assess group benefits in perceptual tasks. In particular, we integrate findings from two frequently investigated joint perceptual tasks: visuospatial tasks and decision-making tasks. For both task types, we find that an exchange of information between coactors is critical to improve joint performance. Yet, the type of exchanged information and how coactors collaborate differs between tasks. In visuospatial tasks, coactors exchange information about the performed actions to distribute task demands. In perceptual decision-making tasks, coactors exchange their confidence on their individual perceptual judgments to negotiate a joint decision. We argue that these differences can be explained by the task structure: coactors distribute task demands if a joint task allows for a spatial division and stimuli can be accurately processed by one individual. Otherwise, they perform the task individually and then integrate their individual judgments.

The social situation affects how we process feedback about our actions

“…In our task the probabilities for each outcome were nearly equal, therefore, there are no differences in probabilities or expectancies. Future studies could investigate whether reward processing is also affected by the outcome in tasks, in which both co-actors actively perform a task collaboratively as, for instance, in joint perceptual tasks (e.g., (40); (41); (42); (43); (44); for a recent review, see (45)) or in joint motor tasks (e.g., (46), for a recent review, see (47)).…”

Predicting group benefits in joint multiple object tracking

“…As a point of note, in earlier studies it has been argued that comparing the pair's performance to the better member's performance is a suitable comparison to assess whether group benefits are attained as it circumvents the potential issue that the better member may dominate the joint performance (for an in-depth discussion of this point, see Wahn et al (2018c)).…”

“…Such a labour division enables groups to attain a higher joint performance than performing the same task alone -a group benefit. benefit (for a recent review, see Wahn et al (2018c)). In this earlier research, a common thread across studies concern the extent that group benefits depend on the information that co-actors in a dyad receive.…”

Neurophysiological correlates of collective perceptual decision‐making

“…Accordingly, the dynamics of collaborative behavior are commonly studied to examine how groups working together have the potential to achieve higher performance than the best individual member in a group (i.e., collective benefit; Bahrami et al., , , ; Fusaroli et al., ; Pescetelli, Rees, & Bahrami, ). Research investigating group collaboration and its benefits encompasses many domains such as problem solving (Laughlin, Bonner, & Miner, ; Laughlin, Hatch, Silver, & Boh, ; Trouche, Sander, & Mercier, ), motor performance (Ganesh et al., ; Masumoto & Inui, ; Wahn, Karlinsky, Schmitz, & König, ; Wahn, Schmitz, König, & Knoblich, ) and perceptual tasks (Bang et al., ; Brennan, Chen, Dickinson, Neider, & Zelinsky, ; Mahmoodi et al., ; Wahn, Czeszumski, & König, ; Wahn, Kingstone, & König, , ; Wahn, Schwandt, et al., ). These studies suggest that information exchange and group dynamics are factors contributing to collective benefit.…”