The Key Role of Visual Coordination in the Formation of Collective Routinized Actions

Routines’ formation has often been explained using the analogy with the habit system; however, such mechanism falls short of explaining the rapid development of routines, and the complexity of social coordination. We argue that routine formation can be conceptualized as a form of joint action, by which visual coordination and task complexity regulate routine formation. Hence, we conducted a laboratory experiment wherein we manipulated the availability of visual information and the complexity of routinization. The results showed that in absence of visual coordination participants’ performances were accurate but slow, hence missing the goal; conversely, when visual coordination was allowed, performance was extraordinarily fast, but less accurate, nevertheless reaching the goal. Task complexity, on the other hand, had only a limited impact. Overall, visual coordination seems to act as a regulator of the speed-accuracy trade-off of collective actions and plays a pivotal role in complex forms of joint action.

惯例（routines）的形成常被借助习惯系统的类比加以阐释；然而，此类机制不足以解释惯例的快速演化以及社会协调的复杂性。我们认为，惯例的形成可被概念化为一种联合行动形式，视觉协调与任务复杂度共同对惯例形成起到调控作用。据此，我们开展了一项实验室实验，对视觉信息的可获取性以及惯例化的复杂度进行操控。实验结果显示，当缺乏视觉协调时，参与者的表现精准但迟缓，未能达成实验目标；反之，当允许视觉协调时，参与者的完成速度极快，但精准度有所下降，不过最终仍达成了实验目标。另一方面，任务复杂度仅产生了有限的影响。总体而言，视觉协调似乎可作为集体行动中速度-准确性权衡的调节因子，并在复杂形式的联合行动中发挥关键作用。