It’s not me, it’s you - Differential neural processing of social and non-social nogo cues in joint action

Abstract

This study used a joint flanker task to investigate differences in processing of social and non-social nogo cues, i.e., between cues indicating that a co-actor should respond and cues signaling that neither actor nor co-actor should respond, using event-related potentials (ERPs) and trial-to-trial response times (RTs). It was hypothesized that a social co-actor's response should be reflected in stronger modulation (slower RTs on subsequent trials; augmented neural responses) for social compared to non-social nogo. RTs and ERPs replicated flanker compatibility effects, with faster responses and increased P3a on compatible trials. In line with the hypotheses, ERPs revealed distinct coding of social and non-social nogo in the conflict-sensitive N2 which showed a compatibility effect only for social nogo, and in the attention/memory-related P3b which was larger for social relative to non-social nogo. The P3a did not distinguish between social and non-social nogo, but was larger for compatible and smaller for go trials. Contrary to our hypotheses, RTs were faster after social relative to non-social nogo. Hence, the representation of the co-actor's response in joint action modulates conflict processing reflected in the N2 and response discrimination and evaluation reflected in the P3b and may facilitate subsequent responses in the context of social versus non-social nogo.

Asymmetric coupling of action and outcome valence in active and observational feedback learning

“…While Experiments 1 and 2 thus provide consistent evidence in favor of a Pavlovian bias in observational learning which is comparable to the one in active learning, both experiments did not comprise a manipulation check to determine if the observational learners had actually believed to be watching an active subject’s performance. Since there is a growing body of evidence that social contextual factors such as the presence of an uninvolved observer (Voegler et al, 2018 ), the representation of the task set of another individual during task sharing (Peterburs et al, 2019 ), or the degree of familiarity between subjects (Morelli et al, 2018 ) affect performance monitoring and reward processing for own and observed behavior, we decided to run a follow-up experiment that involved simultaneous testing of pairs of subjects, with one individual as the active and the other as the observational learner.…”

Theory of mind and joint action in Parkinson’s disease

“…In a large sample of PD patients and HCs, we found that cognitive ToM was associated with a joint Flanker effect. When all participants were arbitrarily categorized into individuals with high or low scores in the AT test, we found that PD patients with high scores exhibited a joint Flanker effect (Atmaca et al, 2011;Peterburs et al, 2017), whereas patients with low scores did not. As shown in Fig.…”

“…Interestingly, the joint action effect has been found in healthy participants using other types of stimulus-response mapping and interference tasks, such as the Flanker task (Atmaca, Sebanz, & Knoblich, 2011;Peterburs, Liepelt, Voegler, et al, 2017); this suggests how the Flanker paradigm is a promising candidate for further scrutinizing joint action, considering that the (Eriksen) Flanker task incorporates response conflict as does the Simon task, and that in this task the interference arises from short-lived stimulus-response assignments that are arbitrary and categorical (and not based on spatial features). In its standard version of the task (as created by Eriksen & Eriksen, 1974), participants respond to different targets by pressing one of two different keys (e.g., the key on the left when K or H appear, and the key on the right when C or S are presented), while targets are surrounded by distracting flankers, which can be (1) identical to the target (e.g., KKKKK; identical trials), (2) perceptually different from the target but referring to the same response (e.g., HHKHH; compatible trials), (3) perceptually different from the target and referring to the opposite response (e.g., SSKSS; incompatible trials), and (4) perceptually different from the target without referring to any response (e.g., UUKUU; neutral trials).…”

“…The interference from a stimulusstimulus overlap is assumed to occur at a perceptual level (Kornblum et al, 1990), even if there is converging proof that the response interference, due to different responses being activated by target and flankers, arises at the level of response selection (Erikson & Schultz, 1979). Using the joint paradigm, Atmaca et al (2011;Peterburs et al, 2017) found a joint Flanker effect because each participant of the pair formed a representation of the co-actor's stimulus-response mapping, and incompatible flankers activated a representation of the co-actor's response due to a co-representation of one's own and the other's task rules. Atmaca et al (2011) found a Flanker effect in both joint and individual conditions, but this effect was larger in the joint situation than in the individual one, suggesting evidence for action co-representation.…”

“…As for the joint Simon effect, in the Flanker task a similar response discrimination problem exists, suggesting that participants are Bmore likely to increase the weight of features that discriminate their response from other events (joint condition), on top of the required stimulus discrimination (joint and solo condition)^ (Dolk et al, 2014a(Dolk et al, , p. 1229. When a salient (human or nonhuman) event is introduced, a greater response discrimination is induced, and thus the impact of all flankers in the response competition increases (Peterburs et al, 2017). Recently, Dittrich et al (2017) proposed a new explanation of the joint Flanker effect, after finding that joint Simon and Flanker effects were not driven by the same underlying processes.…”