Coordination and cooperation in human interaction

Basic data for this project

Description

People coordinate their actions in everyday life in various ways. How is this coordination organized at the process level? The proposed project addresses this largely unresolved question by implementing the assumption of a three-tiered control hierarchy through modeling and empirically testing it, both behaviorally and in terms of its cerebral representation. A specially developed game concept allows us to independently manipulate coordination at three levels: joint goal setting, the translation into subgoals, and performed movements. In WP1, this design will be implemented in a behavioral study where participants, working in pairs, play a digital tile-laying game while their hand and eye movements are recorded. The sequence and duration of actions, such as observing the partner's options and movements, vary depending on the level of coordination. We will test specific behavioral hypotheses based on pilot data. In WP2, a novel modeling approach, which combines discrete and spatiotemporally continuous models, will be developed, trained, and tested using the behavioral data from WP1. Different model variants with varying levels of control are compared. In WP3, we build on this by using the best model from WP2 to create an algorithm that plays with participants while their brain activity is recorded using functional magnetic resonance imaging. As in WP1, we also record hand and eye movements to examine coordination behavior. Both model-based and model-independent multivariate and univariate analyses will be conducted, guided by the assumption that regions of two well-known networks - the Action Observation Network (AON) and the Theory of Mind Network (TOM) - interact differently depending on the coordination between the players. Overall, the project contributes to a better understanding of the neurocognitive processes underlying cooperative behavior.