Helping Hands: Are Two More Trouble Than One?

Authors of the study included psychologists, neuroscientists, and robotics researchers who were interested in the possibility of haptic communication. Haptics, from the Greek haptiko, relates to the sense of touch and motion. Many other kinds of pair interactions have been heavily studied, including facial expression, gesture, spoken language, and visually observing each other's actions. The researchers wished to determine if pairs could coordinate effectively through a haptic channel of communication, which has been little studied.

Their experiment, described in the May 2006 issue of Psychological Science, was designed to be as simple as possible, yet to isolate haptic interactions from other kinds of interactions. In the experiment two individuals grasped opposite ends of a rigid two-handled crank. A marker was attached to the crank. The participants were asked to move the marker toward a target as quickly as possible whenever a target appeared. Each participant had to deal with the other's actions, as experienced solely through the shared forces and motions of the crank. A curtain kept them from seeing each other and they were asked not to talk.

Thirty undergraduates participated in the experiment, and many said they thought the other person interfered with them. However, despite the perceived difficulty of coordination, most pairs performed significantly faster than individuals doing the same task. Not only were pairs faster than individuals, most pairs quickly developed a cooperative strategy. The pairs "specialized" such that one participant primarily accelerated the crank when the target appeared, while the other brought it to rest accurately when the marker reached the target. Most participants were unaware that they had adopted a cooperative strategy.

The researchers speculate that a capacity for haptic communication is a basic human ability used in everyday tasks such as cooperatively moving a table or exchanging a drinking glass, in helping someone learn a manual skill, or in assisting a patient's motions in therapy after a stroke.

The work was supported by the National Science Foundation's Human Social Dynamics initiative.