The Joint Action Effect on Memory as a Social Phenomenon: The Role of Cued Attention and Psychological Distance

Abstract

In contrast to individual tasks, a specific social setting is created when two partners work together on a task. How does such a social setting affect memory for task-related information? We addressed this issue in a distributed joint-action paradigm, where two team partners respond to different types of information within the same task. Previous work has shown that joint action in such a task enhances memory for items that are relevant to the partner’s task but not to the own task. By removing critical, non-social confounds, we wanted to pinpoint the social nature of this selective memory advantage. Specifically, we created joint task conditions in which participants were aware of the shared nature of the concurrent task but could not perceive sensory cues to the other’s responses. For a differentiated analysis of the social parameters, we also varied the distance between partners. We found that the joint action effect emerged even without sensory cues from the partner, and it declined with increasing distance between partners. These results support the notion that the joint-action effect on memory is in its core driven by the experience of social co-presence, and does not simply emerge as a by-product of partner-generated sensory cues.

When Does Oxytocin Affect Human Memory Encoding? The Role of Social Context and Individual Attachment Style

“…Because the perception of social salience is most likely also influenced by context conditions and by individual predispositions of attachment style, these factors should affect the extent and direction of these oxytocin-driven salience effects. Regarding context, we hypothesize that oxytocin should exert a positive effect specifically in the social, as opposed to the non-social context, on memory encoding of partner-relevant words, thus increasing the previously demonstrated joint encoding effect (Eskenazi et al, 2013 ; Wagner et al, 2017 ). Regarding attachment style, we expected, in line with most pertinent previous studies, differential effects for individuals displaying a personality of low vs. high social orientation in their dispositional attachment style, with more beneficial effects of oxytocin in the former group (Bartz et al, 2010a , 2011 , 2015 ; Olff et al, 2013 ).…”

“…Then, after the 45-min delay, they performed a word categorization task, in which they (incidentally) encoded verbal material under social vs. non-social encoding conditions (Eskenazi et al, 2013 ; Wagner et al, 2017 ). Specifically, each participant performed two blocks of this word categorization task: one individual-task block in which they worked alone (non-social context condition) and a joint-task block in which they worked simultaneously with the other participant (social context condition), where each participant in the pair was assigned a different word category (see details below).…”

“…Thus, participants remained physically separated in both conditions, performing the task at different computers in different rooms. Physical separation ruled out confounds with the presence (vs. absence) of perceptual cues generated by the partner in the social condition (see Wagner et al, 2017 ). The two participants in a pair performed the task together on one computer only in the initial practice run of the joint task block.…”

“…Regarding social context, we employed an established distributed task-encoding paradigm that manipulates the social nature of the encoding situation (Eskenazi et al, 2013 ; Wagner et al, 2017 ). Specifically, in this paradigm participants perform a word categorization task either alone (non-social context) or simultaneously with another study participant (social context), where the two participants have to attend to different word categories.…”

“…Previous research has demonstrated memory-enhancing effects due to the manipulation of social vs. non-social nature of the encoding context with this paradigm. Specifically, a surprise memory test performed by each participant individually after the word categorization task revealed enhanced memory performance for words from the partner-relevant word category presented in the social context condition (Eskenazi et al, 2013 ; Wagner et al, 2017 ). We assume that oxytocin would increase this specific memory-promoting effect of social context.…”