Interpersonal Coordination in Joint Multiple Object Tracking

Abstract

People often perform visual tasks together, for example, when looking for a misplaced key. When performing such tasks jointly, people coordinate their actions to divide the labor, for example, by looking for the misplaced key in different rooms. This way, they tend to perform better together than individually-they attain a group benefit. A crucial factor determining whether (and to what extent) individuals attain a group benefit is the amount of information they receive about each other's actions and performance. We systematically varied, across 8 conditions, the information participant pairs received while jointly performing a visual task. We find that participants can attain a group benefit without receiving any information (and thus cannot coordinate their actions). However, actions are coordinated and the group benefit is enhanced if participants receive information about each other's actions or performance. If both types of information are received, participants are faster in creating efficient labor divisions. To create divisions, participants used the screen center as a reference to divide the labor into a left and right side. When participants cannot coordinate actions, they exhibit a bias toward choosing the same side, but they forgo this bias once action coordination is possible, thereby boosting group performance. Public Significance Statement How do 2 people solve a task together? Often, they coordinate their actions to divide the labor of the task, thereby boosting group performance. But how do these labor divisions come about? We found that humans use external reference points (i.e., the center of the computer screen) to divide the labor. Moreover, they are willing to forgo an individual attentional bias for the sake of boosting group performance.