title: The Influence of Social and Nonsocial Variables on the Simon Effect.
abstract: Recently, the Simon effect (SE) has been observed in social contexts when two individuals share a two-choice task. This joint SE (JSE) has been interpreted as evidence that people co-represent their actions. However, it is still not clear if the JSE is driven by social factors or low-level mechanisms. To address this question, we applied a common paradigm to a joint Simon task (Experiments 1 and 4), a standard Simon task (Experiment 2), and a go/no-go task (Experiment 3). The results showed that both the JSE and the SE were modulated by the repetition/non-repetition of task features. Moreover, the JSE was differently modulated by the gender composition of the two individuals involved in the shared task and by their interpersonal relationship. Taken together, our results do not support a pure social explanation of the JSE, nevertheless, they show the independent role of different social factors in modulating the effect.
authors.affiliation: 1 Dipartimento di Lettere, Arti, Storia e Società, Università degli Studi di Parma, Italy.
authors.forename: Davide R
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Mussi
authors.affiliation: 2 Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Università degli Studi di Parma, Italy.|3 Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Milano, Italy.
authors.forename: Barbara F M
authors.initials: BF
authors.lastname: Marino
authors.affiliation: 2 Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Università degli Studi di Parma, Italy.
authors.forename: Lucia
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Riggio
mesh_terms: D002755:Choice Behavior; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis
keywords: joint Simon effect; task features; task sharing; trial-to-trial analysis