Beyond physical entrainment: competitive and cooperative mental stances during identical joint-action tasks differently affect inter-subjective neural synchrony and judgments of agency

Sense of agency in joint action: a critical review of we-agency

The sense of agency refers to the experience of control over voluntary actions and their effects. There is growing interest in the notion of we-agency, whereby individual sense of agency is supplanted by a collective agentic experience. The existence of this unique agentic state would have profound implications for human responsibility, and, as such, warrants further scrutiny. In this paper, we review the concept of we-agency and examine whether evidence supports it. We argue that this concept entails multiplying hypothetical agentic states associated with joint action, thus ending up with an entangled phenomenology that appears somewhat speculative when weighted against the available evidence. In light of this, we suggest that the concept of we-agency should be abandoned in favor of a more parsimonious framework for the sense of agency in joint action.

Effects of Reward Schedule and Avatar Visibility on Joint Agency During VR Collaboration

Joint agency, a group-level sense of agency, has been studied as an essential social cognitive element while engaging in collaborative tasks. The joint agency has been actively investigated in diverse contexts (e.g., performance, reward schedules, and predictability), yet the studies were mostly conducted in traditional 2D computer environments. Since virtual reality (VR) is an emerging technology for remote collaboration, we aimed to probe the effects of traditional reward schedule factors along with novel VR features (i.e., avatar visibility) on joint agency during remote collaboration. In this study, we implemented an experiment based on a card-matching game to test the effects of the reward schedule (fair or equal) and the counterpart's avatar hand visibility (absent or present) on the sense of joint agency. The results showed that participants felt a higher sense of joint agency when the reward was distributed equally regardless of the individual performance and when the counterpart's avatar hand was present. Moreover, the effects of reward schedule and avatar hand visibility interacted, with a bigger amount of deficit for the absent avatar hand when the reward was distributed differentially according to performance. Interestingly, the sense of joint agency was strongly correlated to the level of collaborative performance, as well as to perceptions of other social cognitive factors, including cooperativeness, reward fairness, and social presence. These results contribute to the understanding of joint agency perceptions during VR collaboration and provide design guidelines for remote collaborative tasks and environments for users' optimal social experience and performance.

Bringing social interaction at the core of organizational neuroscience

Organizations are composed of individuals working together for achieving specific goals, and interpersonal dynamics do exert a strong influence on workplace behaviour. Nevertheless, the dual and multiple perspective of interactions has been scarcely considered by Organizational Neuroscience (ON), the emerging field of study that aims at incorporating findings from cognitive and brain sciences into the investigation of organizational behaviour. This perspective article aims to highlight the potential benefits of adopting experimental settings involving two or more participants (the so-called "second person" approach) for studying the neural bases of organizational behaviour. Specifically, we stress the idea that moving beyond the individual perspective and capturing the dynamical relationships occurring within dyads or groups (e.g., leaders and followers, salespersons and clients, teams) might bring novel insights into the rising field of ON. In addition, designing research paradigms that reliably recreate real work and life situations might increase the generalizability and ecological validity of its results. We start with a brief overview of the current state of ON research and we continue by describing the second-person approach to social neuroscience. In the last paragraph, we try and outline how this approach could be extended to ON. To this end, we focus on leadership, group processes and emotional contagion as potential targets of interpersonal ON research.

Interpersonal neural synchrony when predicting others' actions during a game of rock-paper-scissors

As members of a social species, we spend most of our time interacting with others. In interactions, we tend to mutually align our behavior and brain responses to communicate more effectively. In a semi-computerized version of the Rock-Paper-Scissors game, we investigated whether people show enhanced interpersonal neural synchronization when making explicit predictions about others' actions. Across four experimental conditions, we measured the dynamic brain activity using the functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning method. Results showed that interpersonal neural synchrony was enhanced when participants played the game together as they would do in real life in comparison to when they played the game on their own. We found no evidence of increased neural synchrony when participants made explicit predictions about others' actions. Hence, neural synchrony may depend on mutual natural interaction rather than an explicit prediction strategy. This study is important, as it examines one of the presumed functions of neural synchronization namely facilitating predictions.

Winners and losers in brain computer interface competitive gaming: Directional connectivity analysis

OBJECTIVE

to characterize the direction within and between brain connectivity in winning and losing players in a competitive brain-computer interface game.

APPROACH

ten dyads (26.9 ± 4.7 years old, eight females and 12 males) participated in the study. In a competitive game based on neurofeedback, they used their relative alpha (RA) band power from the electrode location Pz, to control a virtual seesaw. The players in each pair were separated into winners (W) and losers (L) based on their scores. Intrabrain connectivity was analyzed using multivariate Granger Causality (GC) and Directed Transfer Function, while interbrain connectivity was analyzed using bivariate GC.

RESULTS

linear regression analysis revealed a significant relationship (p<0.05) between RA and individual scores. During the game, W players maintained a higher RA than L players, although it was not higher than their baseline RA. The analysis of intrabrain GC indicated that both groups engaged in general social interactions, but only the W group succeeded in controlling their brain activity at Pz. Group L applied an inappropriate metal strategy, characterized by strong activity in the left frontal cortex, indicative of collaborative gaming. Interbrain GC showed a larger flow of information from the L to the W group, suggesting a higher capability of the W group to monitor the activity of their opponent.

SIGNIFICANCE

both innate neurological indices and gaming mental strategies contribute to game outcomes. Future studies should investigate whether there is a causal relationship between these two factors.

The sense of agency in joint action: An integrative review

When people perform joint actions together, their individual actions (e.g., moving one end of a heavy couch) must be coordinated to achieve a collective goal (e.g., moving the couch across the room). Joint actions pose unique challenges for understanding people's sense of agency, because each person engaged in the joint action can have a sense of agency not only at the individual level (a sense that "I moved my end of the couch" or "My partner moved their end of the couch"), but also at the collective level (a sense that "We moved the couch together"). This review surveys research that has examined people's sense of agency in joint action, including explicit judgments of agency, implicit measures of agency, and first-hand accounts of agency in real-world settings. The review provides a comprehensive summary of the factors that influence individual- and collective-level agency in joint action; reveals the progress that has been made toward understanding different forms of collective-level agency in joint action, including the sense that agency is shared among co-actors and the sense that co-actors are acting as a single unit; and synthesizes evidence concerning the relationships between different measures of implicit agency and individual- versus collective-level agency in joint action. The review concludes by highlighting numerous outstanding questions and promising avenues for future research.

Brain Synchrony in Competition and Collaboration During Multiuser Neurofeedback-Based Gaming

EEG hyperscanning during multiuser gaming offers opportunities to study brain characteristics of social interaction under various paradigms. In this study, we aimed to characterize neural signatures and phase-based functional connectivity patterns of gaming strategies during collaborative and competitive alpha neurofeedback games. Twenty pairs of participants with no close relationship took part in three sessions of collaborative or competitive multiuser neurofeedback (NF), with identical graphical user interface, using Relative Alpha (RA) power as a control signal. Collaborating dyads had to keep their RA within 5% of each other for the team to be awarded a point, while members of competitive dyads scored points if their RA was 10% above their opponent's. Interbrain synchrony existed only during gaming but not during baseline in either collaborative or competitive gaming. Spectral analysis and interbrain connectivity showed that in collaborative gaming, players with higher resting state alpha content were more active in regulating their RA to match those of their partner. Moreover, interconnectivity was the strongest between homologous brain structures of the dyad in theta and alpha bands, indicating a similar degree of planning and social exchange. Competitive gaming emphasized the difference between participants who were able to relax and, in this way, maintain RA, and those who had an unsuccessful approach. Analysis of interbrain connections shows engagement of frontal areas in losers, but not in winners, indicating the formers' attempt to mentalise and apply strategies that might be suitable for conventional gaming, but inappropriate for the alpha neurofeedback-based game. We show that in gaming based on multiplayer non-verbalized NF, the winning strategy is dependent on the rules of the game and on the behavior of the opponent. Mental strategies that characterize successful gaming in the physical world might not be adequate for NF-based gaming.

Social Agency as a continuum

Sense of Agency, the phenomenology associated with causing one's own actions and corresponding effects, is a cornerstone of human experience. Social Agency can be defined as the Sense of Agency experienced in any situation in which the effects of our actions are related to a conspecific. This can be implemented as the other's reactions being caused by our action, joint action modulating our Sense of Agency, or the other's mere social presence influencing our Sense of Agency. It is currently an open question how such Social Agency can be conceptualized and how it relates to its nonsocial variant. This is because, compared with nonsocial Sense of Agency, the concept of Social Agency has remained oversimplified and underresearched, with disparate empirical paradigms yielding divergent results. Reviewing the empirical evidence and the commonalities and differences between different instantiations of Social Agency, we propose that Social Agency can be conceptualized as a continuum, in which the degree of cooperation is the key dimension that determines our Sense of Agency, and how it relates to nonsocial Sense of Agency. Taking this perspective, we review how the different factors that typically influence Sense of Agency affect Social Agency, and in the process highlight outstanding empirical questions within the field. Finally, concepts from wider research areas are discussed in relation to the ecological validity of Social Agency paradigms, and we provide recommendations for future methodology.

Brain-to-Brain Coupling in the Gamma-Band as a Marker of Shared Intentionality

Cooperation and competition are two ways of social interaction keys to life in society. Recent EEG-based hyperscanning studies reveal that cooperative and competitive interactions induce an increase in interbrain coupling. However, whether this interbrain coupling effect is just a reflection of inter-subject motor coordination or can also signal the type of social interaction is unknown. Here, we show that behavioral coordination and social interaction type can be distinguished according to the frequency of oscillation in which the brains are coupled. We use EEG to simultaneously measure the brain activity of pairs of subjects, while they were performing a visual cue-target task in a cooperative and competitive manner. Behavioral responses were quasi-simultaneous between subject pairs for both competitive and cooperative conditions, with faster average response times for the competitive condition. Concerning brain activity, we found increased interbrain coupling in theta band (3–7 Hz) during cooperation and competition, with stronger coupling during competitive interactions. This increase of interbrain theta coupling correlated with a decrease in reaction times of the dyads. Interestingly, we also found an increase in brain-to-brain coupling in gamma band (38–42 Hz) only during cooperative interactions. Unlike the theta coupling effect, the gamma interbrain coupling did not correlate with dyads’ reaction times. Taken together, these results suggest that theta interbrain coupling could be linked to motor coordination processes common to cooperative and competitive interactions, while gamma brain-to-brain coupling emerges as an electrophysiological marker of shared intentionality during cooperative interactions.