Using Violations of Fitts' Law to Communicate during Joint Action

Cordula Vesper, Laura Schmitz, Günther Knoblich

Research output: Contribution to Book/Report typesConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

When people perform joint actions together, task knowledge is sometimes distributed asymmetrically such that one person has information that another person lacks. In such situations, interpersonal action coordination can be achieved if the knowledgeable person modulates basic parameters of her goal-directed actions in a way that provides relevant information to the less knowledgeable partner. We investigated whether systematic violations of predicted movement duration provide a sufficient basis for such communication. Results of a joint movement task show that knowledgeable partners spontaneously and systematically violated the predictions of Fitts' law in order to communicate if their partners could not see their movements. Unknowing partners had a benefit from these violations and more so if the violations provided a good signal-to-noise ratio. Together, our findings suggest that generating and perceiving systematic deviations from the predicted duration of a goal-directed action can enable non-conventionalized forms of communication during joint action.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2016
EditorsAnna Papafragou, Daniel Grodner, Daniel Mirman, John C. Trueswell
PublisherThe Cognitive Science Society
Pages2219-2224
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9780991196739
StatePublished - 2016
Event38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Recognizing and Representing Events, CogSci 2016 - Philadelphia, United States
Duration: 10 Aug 201613 Aug 2016

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2016

Conference

Conference38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Recognizing and Representing Events, CogSci 2016
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityPhiladelphia
Period10/08/1613/08/16

Keywords

  • Joint action
  • communication
  • cooperation
  • coordination strategy
  • signaling
  • social cognition

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Using Violations of Fitts' Law to Communicate during Joint Action'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this