Description
Many military activities require precise interpersonal coordination to ensure their safety and efficiency. Simultaneous shooting of a given target, or so-called ‘Vic’ formation flights, illustrate the requirement for skillful motor synchronization in military operations. A relevant question therefore is whether military selection and training enhances cooperation skills in service soldiers compared to civilians and what the neurocognitive mechanisms are that underlie variations in interpersonal cooperation? The present study addressed these issues by comparing the performance of 40 cadets from the Belgian Royal Military Academy and 48 age-matched civilian controls in a computer-based cooperation game while their EEG was simultaneously recorded through hyperscanning. The paradigm involved pairs of subjects engaging in patrolling scenarios that required reaching checkpoints simultaneously or in sequence depending on the checkpoints’ color. Performance was assessed in two conditions: (1) a SOLO condition where subjects patrolled on their own, and (2) SYNC[HRONIZED] condition where subjects had to coordinate their actions to reach the same checkpoint together or one after the other. Scenarios where subjects failed to synchronize their actions in the SYNC condition were aborted and had to be started over. Success rate was measured by the average number of times a scenario had to be replayed and the average time spent on a given scenario before completion. Results reveal that military subjects were significantly more successful and faster at completing the trials than civilian subjects in the SYNC condition, confirming a significant impact of military training and selection on their motor synchronization skills. To elucidate what neurocognitive mechanisms drive this effect, average inter-subject coherence in the five major frequency bands (alpha, beta, theta, gamma and delta) was calculated from the subjects’ EEG and compared between groups. Enhanced cooperation in military subjects was associated with significant inter-subject coherence in the gamma band, while civilian subjects’ EEG featured greater inter-subject coherence in the beta band. These differences are interpreted in terms of distinct attentional strategies: While civilian subjects might cooperate through top-down attentional control over their motor output, making them slower and more error-prone, military subjects might predominantly rely on bottom-up, input-driven attention and shared situational awareness. These findings have important implications for research aimed at explaining the neurocognitive underpinnings of interpersonal cooperation.| Period | 15 Mar 2022 |
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| Held at | Royal Military Academy |
| Degree of Recognition | BE Defense |