Assessing visual information in a collaborative table tennis task

Classically the process of human interaction was assumed to rely mainly on higher-level cognitive processes (e.g. inference) whereas more recent evidence suggests that lower-level (e.g. perceptual) processes may play an important role. These findings suggest that information about the interaction partner is beneficial for th e performance of a joint task. In order to test this hypothesis we designed a cooperative table tennis task in which we manipulated visual information about both interaction partners (e.g. about the paddles and about the body movements). We found that joint task performance increases, if this additional information is available. Therefore, we concluded that information about the other's actions and/or information about the own actions seem to be an important source of information for the performance of a joint task. In a second experiment we addressed the question of whether joint performance pr ofits from participants perceiving their own actions (e.g. seeing their own paddle) or from participants perceiving the interaction partner's actions (e.g. seeing the other's paddle). The result will shed light into the processes which govern human interaction