Tasks
\label{sec:tasks}
The literature distinguishes between the effects of mere presence on
simple tasks and complex tasks. We sought to elicit differences in
both of these task types. Each participant therefore performed two tasks,
followed by a brief questionnaire. Both the tasks and the questionnaire were
administered on the tablet. The first task was designed to be a repetitive
visuomotor task (the ‘shape matching’ task); the second one required
recollection and comprehension of spoken information (the ‘story’ task). As
such, we examine the effect of social facilitation on both low- and
high-cognitive tasks.
The ‘shape matching’ task is a game where the participants are asked to match a
colourful target shape with another one, of the same shape, but a different
colour (Figure \ref{fig:shape-matching}). The target shape as well as the eight
possible responses are random combinations from the sets {red, yellow, green,
purple, blue, white} and {square, cross, star, circle}. After the participant
touches a shape to select it as an answer, a new random set is shown on screen.
This is repeated 200 times. By using the same random seed for all participants,
the stimuli sequence was kept identical for all participants.