Representing others' actions: just like one's own?

Trial-to-trial sequential dependencies in a social and non-social Simon task

“…Using non-social stimuli, we were able to replicate previous findings (Sebanz et al, 2003;Tsai et al, 2006) showing an overall Simon effect in the Joint go/nogo task, but not in the Individual go/nogo task, which is in line with Psychological Research the assumption of action co-representation. Taking trial-totrial transitions into account, in the Joint and, importantly, also in the Individual go/nogo task, we found a sequential modulation of the Simon effect that mimics the pattern of sequential modulation effects typically found in standard Simon tasks.…”

“…More broadly, they argued that the spatial stimulus attributes induce automatic response activation. When the irrelevant spatial information conflicts with the spatial response to be given, response conflict arises (Sebanz et al, 2003;Wallace, 1971)-analogous to the Simon effect observed with the standard two-choice Simon task. This implies that, although coordination is not explicitly required in most joint-action paradigms, task sharing seems to involve coactivation of the other person's S-R mappings (Sebanz, Knoblich, & Prinz, 2005).…”

“…Using social pointing stimuli, Sebanz, Knoblich, and Prinz (2003) tested if the Simon effect reappeared in a go/nogo task when another individual performed the complementary go/nogo task by responding to the other target (see also Tsai, Kuo, Jing, Hung, & Tzeng, 2006). Sebanz et al (2003) compared three types of Simon tasks.…”

“…Using social pointing stimuli, Sebanz, Knoblich, and Prinz (2003) tested if the Simon effect reappeared in a go/nogo task when another individual performed the complementary go/nogo task by responding to the other target (see also Tsai, Kuo, Jing, Hung, & Tzeng, 2006). Sebanz et al (2003) compared three types of Simon tasks. In the Individual go/nogo task, participants performed simple go/ nogo responses that required a response to one stimulus attribute (e.g., a red ring on a left-or right-pointing finger) and the withholding of the responses to the other stimulus attribute (e.g., a green ring on a left-or right-pointing finger).…”

“…In the Individual go/nogo task, there is no need for co-representation. According to this view, task representation and performance in a Joint go/nogo task is functionally the same as in a standard Simon task, but different from an Individual go/ nogo task (Sebanz et al, 2003;Tsai & Brass, 2007;van Schie et al, 2004).…”