Anna Zamm

Project title

How do people successfully predict the actions of social partners?

What is your project about?

Coordination is essential to social life across the lifespan, enabling children to take turns while playing, parents to care for their children together, and professional collaborators to work towards shared goals. At the heart of successful coordination is the ability to predict others’ actions, allowing us to anticipate when and how to respond. Yet not all social partners are equally predictable: some are easy to coordinate with, while others are much more challenging. This project investigates how our sensitivity to the predictability of social partners shapes our ability to coordinate with them, and when this sensitivity first emerges in development.

How did you become interested in your particular field of research?

Strangely enough, my interest in the cognitive neuroscience of social interaction grew out of my previous life as a conservatory flutist. Playing music with others requires extraordinarily precise coordination, yet it is also deeply rewarding when it works well. I became fascinated by the brain mechanisms that make this possible. This led me to discover psychology and cognitive science at the university affiliated with my conservatory, and ultimately to choose science over a musical career. After graduating, working in a music neuroscience lab confirmed that I wanted to become a full-time scientist. I then pursued a PhD at McGill University in Canada on the cognitive neuroscience of musical interaction. Since then, I have broadened my research to investigate the remarkable, and still not fully understood, ability of humans to coordinate their actions with others.

What are the scientific challenges and perspectives in your project?

My project addresses a central question in social cognitive neuroscience: How is action prediction linked to successful social coordination? Although prediction is widely considered essential for joint action, little is known about whether we are especially sensitive to the predictability of our social partners’ actions compared with those of others. My project addresses this gap using behavioral and cognitive neuroscience methods to investigate whether such partner-specific sensitivity exists and how it may contribute to successful coordination. A developmental component will examine whether it emerges as early as infancy. By investigating whether action prediction is shaped by whom we are interacting with, the project offers a new perspective on the mechanisms and developmental origins of human coordination.

What is your estimate of the impact, which your project may have to society in the long term?

Scientifically, my project will provide new insight into the behavioral and neural mechanisms that support successful social coordination and establish whether these mechanisms emerge early in development. Difficulties with social coordination affect many people, including individuals with developmental or clinical conditions involving social-motor challenges. These difficulties can interfere with everyday social interaction and contribute to isolation and loneliness. In the longer term, identifying the mechanisms underlying successful coordination could inform new approaches to assessing social-coordination difficulties and developing targeted interventions. The project may thereby contribute to improving social connection and well-being among people who struggle to coordinate with others.

Which impact do you expect the Sapere Aude programme will have on your career as a researcher?

I am deeply honoured to receive a Sapere Aude: DFF-Research Leader-grant. It will make an enormous difference to my career by enabling me to establish an independent research team in Denmark and pursue a project that represents a natural and important next step in my research programme. It will also allow me to build new collaborations with developmental neuroscientists and extend my work into the developmental origins of prediction in joint action. Through collaborations with established researchers and the training of early-career researchers, the programme will strengthen my research networks in Denmark and internationally, while consolidating my development as a research leader. I am profoundly grateful for this opportunity, and to Aarhus University for providing a supportive environment in which to undertake the project.