Effects of Cognitive Load on the Division of Labor: Working Memory and the Joint Simon Effect

Abstract

1) As social beings, we need to understand others’ actions as quickly and accurately as possible. Action understanding can occur at many levels. We sometimes grasp others’ intentions unintentionally. Other times, however, we have to expend effort to draw inferences about their goals. In the context of joint action, the joint Simon effect demonstrates that actors are influenced by the unintended representation of a co-actor’s actions. This effect has been described as quasi-automatic, but it is unclear if the effect is automatic enough to be immune to cognitive load. Thus, we asked participants to complete a joint Simon task with or without a concurrent working memory task. One group of participants maintained a single digit in their mind during working memory load blocks (low-load group), while the other group maintained five digits (high-load group). As a result, the low-load group showed a joint Simon effect both during no-load and low-load blocks. In contrast, the high-load group had no joint Simon effect during either no-load or high-load blocks. These results suggest that the joint Simon effect is not an automatic phenomenon given that it requires cognitive resources. Actors in a joint task may represent a co-actor’s actions in their task set, but only when cognitive resources are available.