Project profile: JAXPERTISE
Through EU funding, Professor Natalie Sebanz of the Central European University (CEU) of Budapest, Hungary, is studying latent cognitive and psychological mechanisms in team play. That is, how individuals learn skilled actions such as those performed by professional athletes when competing in teams.
When competing as a team, sportsmen and women act as a unit in order to prevent defeat: this means making split-second decisions and anticipating an opponent’s movements.
Many achievements, including architecture, surgery, dancing and composition, are the result of human collaboration. According to Sebanz, teamwork and joint action are key to advancing civilisation. These occur whenever two or more people interact in order to accomplish a mutual goal.
“Imagine if a football team were to spend hours talking about how they will score a goal,” Sebanz said. “There would be no guarantee that they would eventually manage to do so. This is why cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience are necessary to understand the mechanisms that come into play when people act together and allow for the fine-grained, timely co-ordination we see in team sports.
“Take synchronised swimmers. Their planned actions have to include their own contribution as well as their partners’. They all have an image of what their moves will look like when performed together. Being driven by this kind of mental imagery helps them to be so co-ordinated.”
Sebanz also explores the benefits of joint improvisation with funding through the ERC Consolidator Grant project, which began in 2014. Sebanz and the ERC use electroencephalography alongside behavioural and physiological indicators to develop autonomous robots designed to collaborate with humans and provide new therapies based on social training interventions and to alleviate social disorders such as autism.
Her research aims to demonstrate that participation in highly co-ordinated activities can boost the participants’ sense of commitment and affiliation: “The more athletes depend on each other,” she says, “the more they feel bound to go on doing their part.”
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