CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2026
| Author | Marschner, Maximilian |
|---|---|
| Title | Acting in the We-Mode: The Content and Structure of Joint Task Representations |
| Summary | The ability to coordinate our actions with others to reach shared goals is a hallmark of human sociality. What are the cognitive foundations for this ability? In the present dissertation, I addressed this question by investigating the content and structure of joint task representations, i.e., of the mental representations that guide action planning and control in joint action by specifying what co-actors need to do to reach their goals. Distinguishing different theoretical proposals of how joint task representations could be structured, the present dissertation tested central assumptions of one of these proposals, referred to as the relational structure of joint task representations. This proposal posits that joint task representations encode group-level relations between co-actors’ individual task contributions, thereby capturing how joint actions are performed at the level of the group rather than at the level of the separate interacting individuals. The present dissertation comprises four empirical research projects testing this proposal by investigating anticipated imitation effects in social interactions between groups (Study I), action-outcome learning in synchronous joint action (Study II), and modulations of imitative response tendencies in joint task settings (Study III and IV). Study I showed that anticipated imitation effects can be shaped by group-level congruency relations but also pointed to limitations in how readily people integrate others’ actions into their own task representations. Study II showed that action-outcome learning is sensitive to group-level relations between co-actors’ individual task contributions. Yet, it also indicated that the application of joint task representations embedding a relational structure is cognitively costly and not necessarily the default in task contexts featuring other co-actors. Finally, Study III and Study IV revealed that shared goals that specify relations between the outcomes of own and others’ individual task contributions are limited in modulating imitative response tendencies in interactive task settings. This indicates that the representations guiding action selection and control in interactive task settings may often remain anchored at individual rather than group-level performance. Taken together, the findings of the present dissertation provide novel support for the proposal that joint task representations can encode group-level relations between co-actors’ individual task contributions. At the same time, they reveal important limits on how readily these representations get employed in interactive task settings. These findings indicate that joint task representations do not default to a fixed structure, but become flexibly adapted to the coordination demands, temporal dynamics and specific characteristics of the task at hand. These findings advance our understanding of the cognitive architecture underlying joint action, indicating that the content and structure of joint task representations are determined by deliberate construal processes balancing costs and benefits of different representational structures. |
| Supervisor | Knoblich, Günther; Dignath, David; Brass, Marcel |
| Department | Cognitive Science Ps |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2026/marschner_maximilian.pdf |
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