“Me”, “You”, and “We”, representations in joint action planning: Evidence from EEG

Successful human interaction often benefits from a joint action plan, which may include the representation of one’s own action as well as the representation of the actions of the other persons, who are involved in the interaction. I will discuss findings from EEG studies, which support the idea that people employ their sensorimotor system to form predictive, task-specific representations of their co-actors’ actions during the planning phase of simple everyday joint tasks, which may result in a more effective interpersonal coordination. In addition, more recent findings suggest that such predictive representations may also concern the interpersonal configuration of actions, regardless of whether the actions have been specified at the individual level. Taken together, these studies provide support for the notion that during joint action planning the involved actors form predictive action representations not only at the individual level (“Me” and “You”), but also at the level of the dyad level (“We” representations).