The Influence of Different Sources of Visual Information on Joint Action Performance

Humans are social beings and they often act jointly together with other humans (joint actions) rather than alone. Prominent theories of joint action agree on visual information being critical for successful joint action coordination but are vague about the exact source of visual information being used during a joint action. Knowing which sources of visual information are used, however, is important for a more detailed characterization of the functioning of action coordination in joint actions. The current Ph.D. research examines the importance of different sources of visual information on joint action coordination under realistic settings. In three studies I examined the influence of different sources of visual information (Study 1), the functional role of different sources of visual information (Study 2), and the effect of social context on the use of visual information (Study 3) in a table tennis game. The results of these studies revealed that (1) visual anticipation of the interaction partner and the interaction object is critical in natural joint actions, (2) different sources of visual information are critical at different temporal phases during the joint action, and (3) the social context modulates the importance of different sources of visual information. In sum, this work provides important and new empirical evidence about the importance of different sources of visual information in close-to-natural joint actions