ABSTRACT
While some cognitive scientists regard social interactions as just another form of environmental interaction, others have proposed that social interactions place special demands on the cognitive systems involved, and may have shaped individual minds in particular ways. One consequence of the demands of action coordination between several individuals could be that in social interactions, others’ tasks are represented and integrated in one’s own action plans even when coordination is not required. To test this assumption, we investigated the performance of pairs of participants carrying out complementary and different tasks alongside each other, and compared this to performance in exactly the same tasks carried out alone. The task of another agent influenced individual performance in the group setting. Performance was also modulated by the nature of the other’s task. This suggests that individuals shared task representations and integrated each other’s task in their own action planning. The results are consistent with the view that the demands of joint action have shaped mental processes, and support the claim that cognition must be studied in relation to social context.
