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Humans engage in joint actions on a daily basis. Some of these joint actions are explicitly coordinated using, for example, speech and gesture, and the others are implicitly coordinated with the actions themselves. The first chapter of this dissertation reviews the use of speech, gesture, and intentional behavioral signals in explicit coordination of joint action and identifies three cognitive mechanisms that enable implicit coordination of joint action, namely, motor resonance, joint intentionality, and environmental and social affordance. The second chapter reports an empirical study exploring the employment of explicit and implicit coordination of joint action in a complex real-life joint activity, assembling a TV cart from its parts. We coded the content of the utterances and gestures that pairs of participants used throughout the assembly and the major and subordinate joint actions they performed. We then coded how each joint action was coordinated, that is, using speech, gestures, or action itself. The results showed speech and gesture served primarily to establish and sustain a shared mental model of the environmental affordances between the co-actors, which occurred primarily at the beginning of the task and as the participants began to attach two major parts. For both major and subordinate joint actions alike, the specifics of the joint actions such as the goal and division of labor was primarily coordinated implicitly. We argue that the shared mental model scaffolded the participants’ implicit coordination of the actions. These findings provide evidence that action itself is a communicative device and part of the conversation between co-actors of a joint activity. They also lend support to the argument that joint action cannot be fully understood on the individual level but must be interpreted as a collective of which each individual is a part.

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The purpose of the study was to measure the reliability of a checklist created and standardized for the study. The development of the checklist, referred to in the study as the Transactional Analysis Checklist (TAC), finds its basis in Transactional Analysis theory. The literature available pertaining to Transactional Analysis was reviewed. No literature, prior to the study, existed which directed itself specifically to the examination of an instrument that could be used during the diagnostic phase of treatment.by .Transactional Analysts. The lack of literature was a partial motivator for the study. It was suggested that informally constructed devices are being used by Transactional Analysts to the exclusion of test batteries. The content areas of the TAC resulted from material informally contributed. The informal devices created by some Transactional Analysts offered direction in creating the TAC. The content areas, with specific questions assigned to each, were designed to aid the interviewer in obtaining valuable information which is deemed necessary if successful therapeutic outcomes are to be realized. The objectives of the instrument are based on the four positions of Transactional Analysis theory: (1) I am Ok - You're Ok, (2) I am Ok - You're not Ok, (3) I am not Ok - You're Ok, and (4) I am not Ok - You're not Ok. The positions are represented by two continua, the I Count and You Count continua. A rating form, accompanying the checklist, is used by the interviewer to rate individuals along both continua. The primary thesis of the study suggested that a newly trained interviewer, one instructed in the theory and methodology of Transactional Analysis, using a checklist device could consistently measure emotional states postulated by Transactional Analysis theory . The method utilized to test this thesis was a structured interview . The TAC formed the basis of the interview, being utilized by the interviewer to extract information from the interviewee. The rating form accompanying the TAC was also used. Two hypotheses were stated, both in the null form . The first challenged the existence of the constructs under study and the second, if the raters rating individuals along the two continua, could do so consistently. Three interviewers, selected from the professional staff of the First District Juvenile Court in Utah, were trained in the theory and practices of Transactional Analysis. The population from which the sample was drawn were those individuals who were "active cases" at the time of the study and under the jurisdiction of the juvenile court . A sample of thirty (30) subjects was chosen. Each interviewer interviewed ten subjects and each interview was tape recorded. At the conclusion of each interview, the interviewer rated the subject on the rating form. When all interviews were completed and all ratings recorded, the tape recordings of the interviews were played back to the interviewers. Each interviewer, once again, rated those he interviewed, this time listening to a tape recording of the interview, and rated tape recorded interviews of the other interviewers. A total of four ratings were made by each interviewer. Statistical treatments were applied. The specific statistics used were: (1) Pearson Product Moment Correlation, (2) An Analysis of Variance technique with unadjusted data, and (3) An Analysis of Variance technique with adjusted data. The results of the treatments supported the existence of the constructs and the ability of newly trained interviewers to rate individuals along the I Count and You Count continua consistently. The study offers the first standardized instrument for use by Transactional Analysts. It is also recommended for use where discriminations between individuals seems necessary (e.g., for therapy assignment). The study contributes one of the few experimental studies centering around the theories and assumptions of Transactional Analysis.

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