Planning Based on One’s Own Past and Other’s Past During a Communication Task

Abstract

Recent behavioural and neuroimaging studies have suggested that constructing ideas about the future (prospection) is based on neural networks responsible for remembering past experiences (episodic memory). On the other hand, episodic memory involves variety of information that includes not only one’s own past behaviours but also those by others. These two types of past information may influence prospection and planning of our future behaviour, especially in a social context involving communication with others. It has never been investigated, however, how the information about one’s own past behaviour and those by others contribute to planning of our future behavior. In the present study, we explored evidence for differential planning processes based on one’s own past behavior and that on other’s past behavior. For this purpose, we used a symbolic communication task involving two subjects who sent and received arbitrary symbol messages to plan for their behaviours in the task. Our results showed that subjects’ planning in the task was influenced adaptively by one’s own past behaviour and those by the other subject (i.e., a partner of the task). Particularly, the subjects’ behaviour favoured their own past behaviour when they sent the same message to the partner as in the previous trial, whereas their behaviour favoured the partner’s past behaviour when they received the same message from the partner as in the previous trial. We speculate that such an adaptive use of differential planning strategies might contribute to successful development of an effective communication system across self and others.