I was told by a friend in the educational-program-assessment industry that the more general form of this is "parallel play"--spending time in the physical company of someone else but doing your own thing. It's more enjoyable than working alone, even if you're not directly communicating, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's also more productive. Hence the existence of Coworking and similar programs. (I'm not familiar with that specific site, but it's at least a good description of the concept. I can't remember the name of the local office space where you can rent a desk for a day for this purpose.)

(Edited to fix broken link.)