Action coordination in groups and individuals: Learning anticipatory control

Abstract

When individuals act alone, they can internally coordinate the actions at hand. Such coordination is not feasible when individuals act together in a group. The present research examines to what extent groups encounter specific challenges when acting jointly and whether these challenges impede extending planning into the future. Individuals and groups carried out a tracking task that required learning a new anticipatory control strategy. The results show that groups face additional demands that are harder to overcome when-planning needs to be extended into the future. Information about others' actions is a necessary condition for groups to effectively learn to extend their plans. Possible mechanisms for exerting and learning anticipatory control are discussed.