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Due to the widespread involvement of distributed collaboration triggered by COVID-19, it has become a new trend that has continued into the post-pandemic era. This study investigated collective performance within two collaborative environments (co-located and distancing settings) by assessing inter-brain synchrony patterns (IBS) among design collaborators using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. The preliminary study was conducted with three dyads who possessed 2–3 years of professional product design experience. Each dyad completed two designated design tasks in distinct settings. In the distributed condition, participants interacted through video conferencing in which they were allowed to communicate by verbalization and sketching using a shared digital whiteboard. To prevent the influences of different sketching tools on design outputs, we employed digital sketching for both environments. The interactions between collaborators were identified in three behaviors: verbal only, sketch only, and mixed communication (verbal and sketch). The consequences revealed a higher level of IBS when mixed communication took place in distributed conditions than in co-located conditions. Comparably, the occurrence of IBS increased when participants solely utilized sketching as the interaction approach within the co-located setting. A mixed communication method combining verbalization and sketching might lead to more coordinated cognitive processes when in physical isolation. Design collaborators are inclined to adjust their interaction behaviors in order to adapt to different design environments, strengthen the exchange of ideas, and construct design consensus. Overall, the present paper discussed the performance of virtual collaborative design based on a neurocognitive perspective, contributing valuable insights for the future intervention design that promotes effective virtual teamwork. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The uniqueness of neural processes between allocentric and egocentric spatial coding has been controversial. The distinctive paradigms used in previous studies for manipulating spatial coding could have attributed for the inconsistent results. This study was aimed to generate converging evidence from previous functional brain imaging experiments for collating neural substrates associated with these two types of spatial coding. An additional aim was to test whether test‐taking processes would have influenced the results. We obtained coordinate‐based functional neuroimaging data for 447 subjects and performed activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta‐analysis. Among the 28 experiments, the results indicate two common clusters of convergence. They were the right precuneus and the right superior frontal gyrus as parts of the parieto‐frontal circuit. Between‐type differences were in the parieto‐occipital circuit, with allocentric showing convergence in the superior occipital gyrus (SOG) cluster compared with egocentric showing convergence in the middle occipital gyrus (MOG) cluster. Task‐specific influences were only found in allocentric spatial coding. Spatial judgment‐oriented tasks seem to increase the demands on manipulating spatial relationships among the visual objects, while spatial navigation tasks seem to increase the demands on maintaining object representations. Our findings address the theoretical controversies on spatial coding that both the allocentric and egocentric types are common in their processes mediated by the parieto‐frontal network, while unique and additional processes in the allocentric type are mediated by the parieto‐occipital network. The positive results on possible task‐specific confound offer insights into the future design of spatial tasks for eliciting spatial coding processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]