Previous studies have demonstrated that combining individuals with different social skills affects performance in rhythmic interpersonal motor coordination, with individuals with lower social skills, such as individuals with autism spectrum disorder or schizophrenia, being found to follow the actions of partners with higher social skills. In this study, we investigated whether this finding could be generalized among pairs of individuals without disability. To perform this, we applied an interpersonal motor coordination task that required participants to perform rhythmic movements featuring an interpersonal relative phase pattern of 90°. We did not assign the two roles (i.e., the preceding and following roles) to the participants, meaning they were forced to determine which roles to adopt by observing each other’s movements, without verbal communication. Individual social skills were measured using the autism-spectrum quotient (AQ). We found that pairs of participants with widely differing AQ scores performed better than did pairs with similar AQ scores. Most notably, the participants with higher AQ scores tended to precede their partners in the present task, which is the opposite result to that reported in previous studies. Our findings suggest that paring individuals without disability according to their social skills influences their interpersonal coordination performance in tasks wherein they must determine the preceding and following roles themselves.
During goal-directed behaviors, individuals can be required to start a movement before deciding on the final goal. Previous studies have focused on the initial movement direction in situations involving multiple targets in different directions from the starting position and have shown that the movement is initiated in the average direction among the target directions. However, the previous studies only included situations with targets at equivalent distances, and the characteristics of motor planning in situations with multiple movement possibilities over different potential distances are unclear. In such situations, movement velocity is another important control variable. Furthermore, while previous studies examined situations with an uncertain motor target position, uncertainty can also exist in the effector position (e.g., body or tool locations). Therefore, we examined (1) whether the average output is confirmed in the initial movement velocity during execution in situations involving two potential movements with different distances. In addition, we examined (2) whether planning of the movement velocity can differ depending on the presence of uncertainty in the cursor or the target. In the main conditions, the participants were required to start a reaching movement with two potential movement distances; in the two-cursor condition, two cursors were presented before the start of the trial, and in the two-target condition, two targets were presented. As a control condition, a distance condition corresponding to each main condition was also performed. In the control condition, the initial movement velocity varied linearly with distance. Then, we tested whether the initial movement velocity in situations with two potential movement distances would follow the averaging output of the corresponding control condition. The results revealed that while the initial movement velocity in the two-target condition was slower than the averaging output, that in the two-cursor condition approached the averaging output. These results suggest that the velocity profile of the goal-directed movement is not simply averaged in a situation where two potential targets exist, and that there is a difference in the planning policy of the initial movement depending on whether the known uncertainty is for the movement goal or the effector.
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