The Underlying neural mechanisms of interpersonal situations on collaborative ability: A hyperscanning study using functional near-infrared spectroscopy

ABSTRACT

The collaborative ability to coordinate an individual with others is critical to performance of joint actions. Prior studies found that different types of interpersonal situations have more or less impact on the collaborative ability of joint actions, but the results are controversial. To clarify the influence of interpersonal situations on collaborative ability, we adopted the joint Simon task, a choice-reaction task that two people perform together. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) was used to study the neural mechanisms of interpersonal situations on collaborative ability and task performance under payoffs that fostered competition or cooperation. The fNIRS results showed that significant inter-brain neural synchronization (INS) occurred in the bilateral inferior parietal lobule (IPL) for both situations. Moreover, for the competition situation, the pairs also shown a significant INS in the right IPL. These results imply that the bilateral IPL is involved in cooperation and competition due to involvement of common concern and understanding of intention. The right IPL may be more crucial for competition because of the psychological resources involved in distinguishing self and others. Eventually, the INS in competition was better than in the other situations, correlating with higher performance of the joint task as well.

KEYWORDS:

• Joint Simon effect
• joint action
• interpersonal situation
• collaborative ability
• fNIRS

Acknowledgments

Xiaolei Song was supported by the following programs: General Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (32071065); Space Medical Experiment Program of Chinese Space Station (HYZHXM03001); Key program of basic scientific research fund of Central Universities (GK202002010).

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Author contributions

SX and QY conceived and designed the study. QY, LJ performed the experiments. RWP provided some advice and comments. SX and LJ wrote the paper. SX, LJ, QY, DM, and RWP edited drafts of the manuscript and contributed to the final version. All authors read and approved the manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Space Medical Experiment Program of Chinese Space Station [HYZHXM03001]; General Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China [32071065]; Key program of basic scientific research fund of Central Universities [GK202002010].