Department of General Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, FernUniversität in Hagen, Hagen, Germany.
Institute of Psychology, German Sport University Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
Psychol Res. 2021 Oct;85(7):2769-2781. doi: 10.1007/s00426-020-01443-9. Epub 2020 Nov 23.
In most of our daily activities and in team sports, we interact with other individuals and do not act in isolation. Using a social variant of the standard two-choice Simon task, this study aims to test if competitive/cooperative processing modes (i.e., metacontrol states) change the degree of bodily self-other integration between two persons in joint action. In addition, and more exploratory the study tested if this effect depends on a shared group experience with the partner. Two participants shared a visual Simon task, so that each person basically performed complementary parts of the task, which transfers the paradigm into a go/no-go Simon task for each person. Before running this joint Simon task, we set both participants either in a competitive or a cooperative control state by means of a dyadic game, a manipulation aimed at testing possible goal transfer across tasks. We found significant joint Simon effects for participants who were in a competitive state and for participants who were in a cooperative state. The joint Simon effect for participants being in a competitive state was significantly smaller than for participants being in a cooperative state. When experiencing the goal induction together with the partner, the joint Simon effect was significantly decreased as when the induction was performed alone. Both effects (metacontrol state induction and shared experience) seem to be statistically independent of each other. In line with predictions of metacontrol state theory, our study indicated that abstract cognitive goal states can be transferred from one task to another task, able to affect the degree of bodily self-other integration across different task situations.
在我们的大多数日常活动和团队运动中，我们与他人互动，而不是孤立地行动。本研究采用社会版标准二择一 Simon 任务，旨在检验竞争/合作加工模式（即元控制状态）是否会改变两人在联合动作中的身体自我-他人整合程度。此外，更具探索性的是，该研究还测试了这种效应是否取决于与伴侣的共同群体经验。两名参与者共享视觉 Simon 任务，因此每个人基本上执行任务的互补部分，这将范式转化为每个人的 Go/No-Go Simon 任务。在运行这个联合 Simon 任务之前，我们通过二元游戏将两个参与者设定在竞争或合作控制状态，这种操纵旨在测试任务之间可能的目标转移。我们发现，处于竞争状态的参与者和处于合作状态的参与者都存在显著的联合 Simon 效应。处于竞争状态的参与者的联合 Simon 效应明显小于处于合作状态的参与者。当与伙伴一起体验目标诱导时，联合 Simon 效应明显降低，而当单独进行诱导时则没有。这两种效应（元控制状态诱导和共同体验）似乎彼此独立。根据元控制状态理论的预测，我们的研究表明，抽象的认知目标状态可以从一个任务转移到另一个任务，能够影响不同任务情境下身体自我-他人整合的程度。
