The research project of Chifumi Sakata investigated how acting together affects learning of spatial layout. She asked participants to either search for the target and respond upon it turn-takingly with another participant (thus respond in half the trials) or search and respond in isolation. She also conducted an experiment where participants responded to the target in every trial in isolation. The participants were repeatedly presented with the target within the fixed layout of distractors, and they could potentially learn the layout and find the target efficiently. The findings were that they learned the spatial layout more when they searched with another participant. Their performance was also similar to those who responded in every trial.

Chifumi Sakata will engage the audience by making concrete examples of the search task (and also performing them in reality) and showing the results of search time which reflects learning of the spatial layout. She will highlight, in simple and intuitive terms, the findings that two people acting turn-takingly may learn spatial layout as if they did each other’s action.