How to support action prediction: Evidence from human coordination tasks

When two or more people perform actions together such as shaking hands, playing ensemble music or carrying an object together, they often naturally adjust the spatial and temporal parameters of their movements to facilitate smooth task performance. This paper reviews recent findings from experiments with human participants to demonstrate ways in which individuals strategically modulate their own action performance to support a task partner in predicting their actions and thereby facilitate coordination. Based on this evidence, it is discussed how strategic action modulation (“action signaling”) might be a useful approach also for robotic systems to assist human users, thereby reducing cognitive load and flexibly supporting the acquisition of new skills.