Observable outputs (C)

Based on the contrast between oneself (through individual processing) and partners (through observable outputs) mental models, group members can infer and mobilize actions to respond appropriately to the ongoing group needs to meet the task goals.

These actions produce outputs which are visible by the other group members. They include task products, collaborative acts, and non-verbal behaviors.

2.4.3.1 Task products (C1)

Task products represent a series of incremental outputs and achievements produced by the group (Decuyper et al., 2010). These task products can take the form of writ-ten outputs of personal work, completed objectives and milestones, and all sorts of joint productions arising throughout the collaborative problem-solving task and ac-cessible to everyone. The accumulation of task products builds a final product (e.g., a final solution to the problem), which has to be judged satisfying enough by group members to end the collaborative problem-solving task.

2.4.3.2 Collaborative acts (C2)

Communication is a continuous process, i.e., the sender and the receiver are highly co-active and continuously intertwined in a mutual coordination process (Fogel, 2017). During collaborative problem-solving, individuals dynamically alter their behaviors with respect to the ongoing and anticipated actions of their partners (Fo-gel, 2017). Communicative exchanges can be considered as actions that shape col-laborative problem-solving, i.e., speech acts. Speech act theory (Austin, 1975) pos-tulates that every utterance can be considered as acts, i.e., they are used to per-form in the world. They involve verbal communication (locution) conveying in-tention (illocution) from the speaker (e.g., provide information, clarify an idea, ask for help, encourage). These speech acts are intended to produce effects, i.e., conse-quences on feelings, thoughts, and actions of others (perlocution) (Sbisà, 2009). In the three-level model, we propose to call these different speech acts collaborative

acts as they represent a sub-category of speech acts involving collaborative inten-tions (in contrast with competitive inteninten-tions, for example). The term collabora-tive act rarely appears in the literature (see, e.g., Singley et al., 2000; Tausczik et al., 2014). According to Tausczik et al. (2014), it can be considered as the most ba-sic element of collaboration. Collaborative acts have different foci that refer to the different dimensions afore-described, i.e., cognitive, motivational, and relational.

Therefore, collaborative problem-solving involves socio-cognitive and socio-meta-cognitive acts, socio-motivational and socio-meta-motivational acts, socio-relational and meta-relational acts. As part of the three-level model, we define socio-collaborative acts as acts representing a mutual adaptation to each other’s ex-changes. In this case, although group members dynamically alter their collabora-tive acts in response to those of their partners, there are not explicit intentions to redirect the course of collaboration to ensure the achievement of the task goal, i.e., socio-meta-collaborative acts. As the notion of co-regulation is ambiguous in the literature and refers to both socio-collaborative and socio-meta-collaborative acts (see, e.g., Fogel, 2017; Hadwin et al., 2011), we propose to distinguish more clearly these two aspects. In our view, collaborative co-modulation reflects the use of socio-cognitive, socio-motivational, and socio-relational acts. In contrast, collaborative co-regulation reflects the use of socio-meta-cognitive, socio-meta-motivational and socio-meta-relational acts.

Cognitive acts (C2₁) The cognitive acts refer to the cognitive and socio-meta-cognitive exchanges dedicated to solving the problem. In a broad sense, the socio-cognitive acts involve the processing of interpersonal cognitive informa-tion that complements the individual cognitive processes (Dillenbourg, 1999) afore-described. Socio-cognitive acts serve three main activities, namely, knowledge ac-quisition, participation, and creation that shape group collaboration (Decuyper et al., 2010). Knowledge acquisition is dedicated to promoting the creation of a shared representation of the problem. This shared representation helps to acquire a cogni-tive mutual understanding of the problem to be solved. It involves socio-cognicogni-tive acts dedicated to sharing useful information, such as raising task-related difficulties or highlight task-information. Participation is about promoting mutual coordina-tion. It involves acts promoting a progressive mutual adaptation to each other’s behaviors to encourage a smooth interaction between group members. It also in-cludes acts dedicated to promoting the understanding of one’s own thoughts by the others and vice versa. Creation is about the co-construction of new knowledge and ideas to solve the problem. It involves acts dedicated to acknowledging, repeat-ing, paraphrasrepeat-ing, enunciatrepeat-ing, questionrepeat-ing, challengrepeat-ing, negotiating. The notion of transactivity (Weinberger & Fischer, 2006) highlights the incremental nature of these socio-cognitive acts. Indeed, socio-cognitive acts can convey different levels of co-construction, from new and unconnected to highly integrated ideas or knowledge.

The meta-cognitive acts are dedicated to monitoring and controlling socio-cognitive acts, which is also called team reflexivity (Decuyper et al., 2010). They reflect group members’ will to reorient collective cognition to tackle cognitive inter-personal challenges (Järvelä et al., 2013) and meet the superordinate goal of solving the problem. Socio-meta-cognitive acts serve five different levels of co-regulation of socio-cognitive acts, namely, reporting, process monitoring, process reflection, pro-cess planning, propro-cess revising (Borge et al., 2019). Reporting involves reporting one’s own opinion concerning collaboration quality. In this case, group members do not justify their judgment based on concrete observations but share general state-ments such as “We covered a lot” or “We like to keep each other’s opinion and ideas in mind while implementing our own”. Process monitoring involves acts indicating evidence that group members pay attention to the collaboration process by under-lying ongoing collaborative events or patterns of collaboration such as “We did not bring in additional resources such as citing from the internet”. Process reflection goes on step beyond monitoring in the sense that group members mobilize acts that overtly reflect on the collaborative discussion and provide justifications about why some events occurred, such as “I think the problem is that we read two different things” or “It’s just difficult to debate when we agree with the author. This wasn’t a real debatable subject in my mind”. Process planning refers to acts discussing the organization of the activity in order to achieve the task goal. Contrary to process reflection that highlights past events, process planning mainly focuses on forward-thinking and considers goal, strategy, or plan to solve the problem, such as “To be-gin, we definitively need to work on time management. Our communication skills are sufficient when it comes to the subject matter, but we definitively need to get tasks done with a sense of urgency” or “We just need to be more critical on each other’s judgments and be holistic". Finally, process revising involves acts dedicated to the reconsideration of the planning process as well as its alteration considering new information that arises during collaboration, such as “I’m not sure our last ap-proach worked. Maybe we have to assign outside reading too”.

Motivational acts (C2₂) The motivational acts refer to the socio-motivational and meta-motivational exchanges mobilized when solving the problem. The socio-motivational acts naturally occur during collaborative problem-solving and are not explicitly dedicated to monitoring and controlling the group motivation but instead expressing the current motivational state of group members regarding the task. They can include acts such as “That is a very complex task!” or “Oh, I’m not very focused today”. They are thought to co-modulate the group’s commitment to achieving the task in creating a motivational tone involving different motivational components such as collective beliefs about self-esteem (i.e., the level of esteem that individu-als have for their group; Crocker and Luhtanen, 1990), self-efficacy (i.e., how group members think they can overcome challenges as a group; Bandura, 1977) or val-ues. They also contribute to the emergence of some phenomena that constraints the

group’s effort and persistence to achieve the task, such as task cohesion (i.e., the commitment of a group to achieve a goal in a collective effort; Guzzo et al., 1995), positive interdependence (i.e., the fact that group members strongly rely on each other to achieve their common goal; Johnson and Johnson, 2009) or social loafing (i.e., “a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members strivings for unanimity override their moti-vation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action”; Janis, 2008, p.237).

Similar to socio-meta-cognitive acts, the socio-meta-motivational acts involve moni-toring and controlling socio-motivational acts. They reflect group members’ will to reorient collective motivation to tackle motivational challenges (Järvelä et al., 2008).

Some socio-motivational acts (Järvelä et al., 2008) adapted from Wolters’ meta-motivational strategies (Wolters, 2003) have been described (Järvenoja & Järvelä, 2009). The social reinforcing strategy refers to identify and produce acts dedicated to reinforcing and shaping a secure or positive atmosphere as well as to draw atten-tion to the positive aspects of the challenging situaatten-tions. The socially shared goal-oriented talk strategy concerns exchanges dedicated to highlighting reasons for per-sisting in the task. The interest enhancement strategy consists of bolstering group motivation in increasing personal (e.g., intrinsic motivation) or situational interest (i.e., temporary interest arising spontaneously from the characteristics of the task) regarding the task. The task structuring strategy focuses on producing acts that structure and coordinate the group work or the environment in order to mitigate off-task behavior. The efficacy management strategy is dedicated to managing the motivational beliefs, self, and collective efficacy. Finally, the handicapping of group functioning strategy aims at highlighting or providing obstructions to task comple-tion. Its role could be twofold. First, it could preserve collective self-esteem in pro-viding good reasons to legitimate an expected failure. Second, it could promote a switch towards mastery goals in leaving aside strong performance expectations.

Relational acts (C2₃) As building relationship is an inherently communicative phe-nomenon (Guerrero et al., 2017), interpersonal communication also plays a central role in spreading socio-relational messages within the group (Hale et al., 2005). The relational acts refer to the socio-relational and socio-meta-relational exchanges mo-bilized when solving the problem. The socio-relational acts naturally occur dur-ing collaborative problem-solvdur-ing and reflect the current relational states of group members along the different core relational components outlined earlier. They can include acts such as “I like to work with you” or “We understand each other really well”. They are thought to co-modulate the group’s relationship in creating a rela-tional tone that reflects the integration of one of several of these components. It can induce facilitatory or hindering effects on collaborative problem-solving. For exam-ple, psychological safety (i.e., a sense of community where group members feel they are treated sympathetically by their fellows; Kreijns et al., 2003), social cohesion (i.e.,

the sense of unity between group members; (Carron & Brawley, 2000) can be under-stood as phenomena emerging from high levels in some relational components, such as receptivity, affection, similarity.

2.4.3.3 Non-verbal and para-verbal behaviors (C3)

Non-verbal behaviors (e.g., facial expression, gesture, posture, proxemics, eye gaze, appearance, haptics) and para-verbal components (e.g., pitch, volume, speaking rate) are others sources of observable outputs that may convey information that can substitute, contradict, reinforce or complement the information provided by the collaborative acts. The expression of emotions through non-verbal and para-verbal communication is an important source of information sharing in collabo-rative problem-solving. As part of the three-level model, we postulate that non-verbal and para-non-verbal communication are used differently according to the type of collaborative dimension involved. This assumption seems supported by the fact that individuals need predominantly cognitive acts to solve the task. Therefore, motivational and relational co-modulation may be mainly expressed through non-verbal and para-non-verbal communication. Conversely, non-verbal communication could be mostly used to co-regulate motivation and relationship when needed (i.e., socio-meta-motivational and socio-meta-relational acts).