FUNCIONALIDAD FAMILIAR ROBOS

Coordination of attention and knowledge states with others enables better ways of cooperating. Action coordination is more effective, and it also allows a more complex type of coordination to emerge: strategic coordination. In coordination dilemmas, partners need to decide how to act based on their expectations of what others will do. They must overcome two types of

uncertainty: first, uncertainty about their knowledge (e.g., knowledge about the presence of a collaborative option), and second, uncertainty about their

option). Shared knowledge helps to solve the former type of uncertainty, and it enables the formation of expectations and commitments, which help to solve the latter type.

Different attention and knowledge levels support the commitments and obligations, and the higher degree of jointness the levels have, the stronger the support they provide. This is the case for several reasons. First, higher degrees of jointness establish more certainty for social partners. For example, in the levels with lower degrees of jointness (monitoring and common attention) partners have to consider the other’s attentional state, but in the levels with a higher degree of jointness (mutual and shared attention) the direct contact gives them immediate evidence that they are paying attention to each other (Carpenter & Liebal, 2011; Gómez, 1996). Second, in the level with lowest

degree of jointness (monitoring attention), partners can only produce unilateral knowledge about the partner’s focus of attention (e.g., she sees the collaborative option) and a unilateral expectation about the partner’s behavior. However, the levels with a higher degree of jointness (common, mutual, and shared

attention) can produce knowledge in common about their focus of attention (e.g., we see the collaborative option). In addition, the expectations about the partner’s probable behavior could become knowledge in common between partners as well. This might cause partners to feel some sense of minimal commitment to fulfill these expectations (J. Michael, personal communication, January 15, 2018). The openness in the mutual and shared levels heightens the pressure to fulfill these expectations beyond the common level. Third, as it is difficult to plausibly deny that attention and knowledge are shared in the level with the highest degree of jointness, shared attention, in normative contexts can give rise to commitments and obligations.

Interestingly, the distinction between second-person and third-person ways of achieving knowledge in common may link to dual process theories of social cognition. These theories propose that there are two different kinds of mental processes: processes that are automatic, fast, efficient, and less cognitively demanding, and processes that are controlled, slower, and cognitively effortful (e.g., Apperly & Butterfill, 2009; Frith & Frith, 2008; Kahneman & Frederick, 2002). Empirical research is needed to clarify the

nature of processing in the second- versus third- person levels and to answer the question about their ontogenetic and phylogenetic primacy or co-

development.

4.2 Future directions

The presented findings have opened up new questions for future

research. One useful contribution of the theoretical part of the thesis is the scale of jointness idea and discussion of. It is interesting to note that several factors that influence different aspects of jointness differ significantly across different societies, for instance, the degree of interdependency between social partners, the frequency of face-to-face interactions, the focus of attention on oneself vs. others, the sensitivity to interpersonal and contextual cues, and the importance of indirect vs. direct communication styles. These factors might influence when people choose to engage in different levels, which specific behaviors they use, and what are the normative consequences of these levels. Future studies are needed to elucidate the specific roles of these factors in different societies. These studies would not only help us to generalize the findings presented in this thesis but also to improve our understanding of how individuals from different societies can cooperate more effectively.

Although the framework does not presuppose that social partners can engage in the different levels only when they are physically co-present, the examples used to illustrate the levels, as well as the two empirical studies, focused on the context in which the partners were in the same place at the same time. An interesting topic for future work would be to explore the role of shared attention in cooperation without physical co-presence, for example in virtual environments (e.g., using social media, messaging platforms, emails). We have started to rely on virtual environments to a greater extent than ever before. When partners are co-present, they can co-create their experience by bidirectional influence and quickly align their mental states about the co- attended object. In virtual environments, certainty about shared attention and knowledge might be decreased, because the contact between partners is

restricted. For example, when using video call apps, it is harder to interpret the other’s reactions (e.g., is the gaze away related to what I am saying or to some

distraction behind screen). In messaging apps, the contact is delayed in time and there is typically no simultaneous confirmation that both partners read the message. Therefore, it would be useful to test whether the social attention levels in virtual environments, compared to real environments, are equally effective in supporting communication and cooperation and which behaviors are especially beneficial to support smooth and mistake-free episodes of shared attention in virtual environments.

Another promising line of research would be to study the role of the social attention levels in facilitating prosocial behavior. It would be interesting to explore to what extent normative forces to behave prosocially are influenced by the different attention and knowledge levels. To illustrate: a young man is sitting in a tram and he sees an injured person enters the tram. He knows that he should offer his seat. It is likely that levels with higher degrees of jointness increase prosocial behavior. This might be the case because plausible

deniability that the young man does not know that his help is needed differs between the levels. All levels with knowledge in common might facilitate young man’s perceived obligation to get up over monitoring attention (with individual knowledge). In a recent study, we found that the probability of young children’s helping in a similar situation was higher in common attention (children and an injured experimenter had common knowledge about the fact that children’s help is needed) compared to monitoring attention (children knew individually that their help is needed) (Siposova, Grueneisen, Helming, Tomasello, & Carpenter, in prep.). Moreover, differences might exist even between the common, mutual and shared level. Future studies could manipulate the jointness about the need for help and measure whether it affects prosociality. For example, in all conditions the participant having a seat can see that an injured person needs a seat, what varies is which attention levels the participant engages in. The crucial measure is whether and to what extent the participant provides help.