Susanne Täuber

Previous work has shown that successful tacit coordination depends on the availability of working memory resources. Much less is known about how thought processes, such as mind-wandering and self- vs. other-oriented attention, influence tacit coordination. In this experiment, we examined the effect of these thought processes on tacit coordination, and whether we could influence performance and thought processes through brief meditation interventions. While coordination and thought processes were not significantly affected by the interventions when compared to a control intervention, we found that thought processes, as measured by thought probes randomly interleaved between trials, significantly influenced coordination performance. Specifically, dyads performed significantly better when other-oriented than when self-oriented, showing greater convergence on shared decision rules over time. This study demonstrates the importance of orienting attention beyond self-generated responses in order to mutually adapt actions and mental states to achieve shared goals in iterated social coordination.

Pursuing replicability — independent evidence for previous claims — is important for creating generalizable knowledge^1,2. Here we attempted replications of 274 claims of positive results from 164 quantitative papers published from 2009 to 2018 in 54 journals in the social and behavioural sciences. Replications were high powered on average to detect the original effect size (median of 99.6%), used original materials when relevant and available, and were peer reviewed in advance through a standardized internal protocol. Replications showed statistically significant results in the original pattern for 151 of 274 claims (55.1% (95% confidence interval (CI) 49.2–60.9%)) and for 80.8 of 164 papers (49.3% (95% CI 43.8–54.7%)), weighed for replicating multiple claims per paper. We observed modest variation in replication rates across disciplines (42.5–63.1%), although some estimates had high uncertainty. The median Pearson’s r effect size was 0.25 (95% CI 0.21–0.27) for original studies and 0.10 (95% CI 0.09–0.13) for replication studies, an 82.4% (95% CI 67.8–88.2%) reduction in shared variance. Thirteen methods for evaluating replication success provided estimates ranging from 28.6% to 74.8% (median of 49.3%). Some decline in effect size and significance is expected based on power to detect original effects and regression to the mean because we replicated only positive results. We observe that challenges for replicability extend across social–behavioural sciences, illustrating the importance of identifying conditions that promote or inhibit replicability^3,4.

Building on a number of case studies, this essay examines the role of university management for ensuring academic freedom in the European context. The emerging pattern points to academic freedom being granted to and withheld from scholars at the discretion of university managers, with attacks on academic freedom targeting mainly critical scholarship: academics who challenge, criticize and debate power differentials and inequality practices are increasingly being silenced, deprived of their livelihoods and intellectually erased from public discourse. Far from being an established professional norm, a civil right, or a legal protection upon which academic research is secured, academic freedom becomes a rhetoric adopted by university managers to punish actual and discourage future challenges to management’s power. As such, it is being used as a repressive tactic that directly undermines democratic processes. While attacks on academic freedom are deliberate acts of purifying the university of critical scholarship, these attacks are preceded by less visible acts of omission revolving around exclusion, marginalization, and exploitation of minoritized groups in academia. Importantly, acts of omission target the same critical scholarship as deliberate attacks on academic freedom. Reinforcing each other, they serve as mechanisms to maintain and reproduce power differentials within academia. The resulting environment favors scholars willing to self-censor, while erasing scholars engaging critically with power, a filter effect negatively affecting quality of research and education.

In our previous study (Newman et al., in press, SCAN), dyad performance in a coordination task was shown to be amenable to manipulations of processes that underpin perspective-taking, namely working memory. When we diminished resources commonly implicated in observational perspective-taking, coordination performance also diminished. In this study, we expand on these findings to test whether performance could be improved by bolstering such resources. Participant dyads performed an iterated turn-based pure coordination task before and after one of three brief (~10 minute) interventions: focused-attention meditation (which has been shown to improve working memory), loving-kindness meditation (which increases integration of self- and other-oriented perspectives), or a neutral control. Using intermittent thought probes, we also assessed the degree to which participants across interventions engaged in mind-wandering, as well as the degree to which their attention was oriented towards either self-generated or other-generated actions. We found no significant differences in the effects of the interventions on mean coordination performance or thought probe responses. The loving-kindness meditation marginally enhanced trial-by-trial improvement in performance time-series when compared to the control. Dyads performed significantly better when other-oriented and showed greater convergence on shared decision rules over time than when self-oriented. On-task thought marginally decreased the number of trials needed for participants to align their responses, with significantly better performance on initial trials when on-task compared to when mind-wandering. This study demonstrates the particular importance of orienting attention beyond self-generated response in order to mutually adapt actions and mental states to achieve shared goals in iterated social coordination.

A recent method gaining influence in social neuroscience is “hyperscanning”: the simultaneous recording of two or more participants’ brains. As inter-brain synchronization (IBS) in EEG has been reported during an increasing number of social behaviors and across brain regions and frequencies, new questions have emerged about whether this synchronization reflects an active exchange of information mediated by the coupling of sensorimotor and perceptual systems across individuals, or whether it reflects incidental similarities in brain response to shared stimuli and common task demands. To help disentangle the different interpretations of IBS in EEG, we review the various experimental design and analysis choices which could potentially explain different findings. Specifically, we build on previous suggestions that findings may depend on different levels of in(ter)dependence and timing demands in various social tasks. We also suggest standard practices in experimental design and analysis to control for different interpretations of IBS while also making these interpretations explicit.

Coordinating actions with others is thought to require Theory of Mind (ToM): the ability to take perspective by attributing underlying intentions and beliefs to observed behavior. However, researchers have yet to establish a causal role for specific cognitive processes in coordinated action. Since working memory load impairs ToM in single-participant paradigms, we tested whether load manipulation affects two-person coordination. We used EEG to measure P3, an assessment of working memory encoding, as well as inter-brain synchronization (IBS), which is thought to capture mutual adjustment of behavior and mental states during coordinated action. In a computerized coordination task, dyads were presented with novel abstract images and tried selecting the same image, with selections shown at the end of each trial. High working memory load was implemented by a concurrent n-back task. Compared with a low-load control condition, high load significantly diminished coordination performance and P3 amplitude. A significant relationship between P3 and performance was found. Load did not affect IBS, nor did IBS affect performance. These findings suggest a causal role for working memory in two-person coordination, adding to a growing body of evidence challenging earlier claims that social alignment is domain-specific and does not require executive control in adults.