Cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying interpersonal action coordination

从简单的将咖啡杯递给朋友到复杂的与舞伴跳探戈，日常生活中充满了人们与他人协调行动的例子。很少有研究调查人际协调背后的认知和神经机制；认知神经科学研究几乎只关注单独执行任务的人。我研究的长期目标是了解人们如何同时处理他人的行为和自己的行为，以产生流畅的人际协调。我的研究的短期目标是调查允许人们的机制：1)实现说话人在谈话中轮流转换的典型精确时间，2)同时对自己和他人行为的感官后果做出预测，3)监控自己和他人行为的结果，以确保个人和共同的目标都得到满足。实现这些目标的方法包括要求听众对谈话中说话人轮流发言之间的停顿时间进行评估（研究计划1），使用脑电图（EEG）检查人们对自己和他人行为的感官后果的神经反应（EEG用于测量大脑活动）；研究计划2)，并调查人们在收到表明他们或他们的伴侣在人际协调中犯了错误的反馈后展开的大脑活动的时间过程（研究计划3）。拟议的研究不仅将推进行动和认知的理论模型，这些模型迄今为止假设认知过程是独立运作的，可以单独研究；它还将对人工智能研究产生影响，因为对人类人际协调的理解的进步有助于改善人机交互。此外，拟议的研究将为高质量的培训经验提供许多机会，这将支持学生发展他们在学术环境和更广泛的工作中取得成功所必需的关键技能。

From the simple act of passing a coffee cup to a friend to the complex activity of dancing a tango with a partner, everyday life abounds with examples of people coordinating their actions with others. Very little research has investigated the cognitive and neural mechanisms that underlie interpersonal coordination; cognitive neuroscience research has focused almost exclusively on people performing tasks alone. The long-term objective of my research is to understand how people process others' actions concurrently with their own to produce fluid interpersonal coordination. The short-term goals of my research are to investigate the mechanisms that allow people to 1) achieve the precise timing that is typical of transitions between speakers' turns during conversation, 2) concurrently make predictions about the sensory consequences of their own and others' actions, and 3) monitor the outcomes of their own and others' actions to ensure that both individual and shared goals are met. Methodologies used to achieve these goals include asking listeners to rate the durations of pauses between speakers' turns during conversation (Research Program 1), examining people's neural responses to the sensory consequences of their own and others' actions using electroencephalography (EEG, used to measure brain activity; Research Program 2), and investigating the time-course of brain activity that unfolds after people receive feedback indicating that they or their partner have made an error during interpersonal coordination (Research Program 3). The proposed research will not only advance theoretical models of action and cognition that have heretofore assumed that cognitive processes operate and can be studied in isolation; it will also have implications for artificial intelligence research, as advances in understanding human interpersonal coordination contribute to improvements in human-robot interaction. In addition, the proposed research will provide numerous opportunities for high-quality training experiences that will support students' development of critical skills necessary for their success in academic contexts and in the broader work force.