Movement Synchrony in the Mirror Game

Dyadic body competence predicts movement synchrony during the mirror game

The process of synchronizing our body movements with others is known to enhance rapport, affect, and prosociality. Furthermore, emerging evidence suggests that synchronizing activities may enhance cognitive performance. Unknown, by contrast, is the extent to which people's individual traits and experiences influence their ability to achieve and maintain movement synchrony with another person, which is key for unlocking the social and affective benefits of movement synchrony. Here, we take a dyad-centered approach to gain a deeper understanding of the role of embodiment in achieving and maintaining movement synchrony. Using existing data, we explored the relationship between body competence and body perception scores at the level of the dyad, and the dyad's movement synchrony and complexity while playing a 2.5-min movement mirroring game. The data revealed that dyadic body competence scores positively correlate with movement synchrony, but not complexity, and that dyadic body perception scores are not associated with movement synchrony or complexity. Movement synchrony was greater when the more experienced member of the dyad was responsible for copying movements. Finally, movement synchrony and complexity were stable across the duration of the mirror game. These findings show that movement synchrony is sensitive to the composition of the dyad involved, specifically the dyad's embodiment, illuminating the value of dyadic approaches to understanding body movements in social contexts.

How and Why People Synchronize: An Integrated Perspective

Academic AbstractInterpersonal synchrony, the alignment of behavior and/or physiology during interactions, is a pervasive phenomenon observed in diverse social contexts. Here we synthesize across contexts and behaviors to classify the different forms and functions of synchrony. We provide a concise framework for classifying the manifold forms of synchrony along six dimensions: periodicity, discreteness, spatial similarity, directionality, leader-follower dynamics, and observability. We also distill the various proposed functions of interpersonal synchrony into four interconnected functions: reducing complexity and improving understanding, accomplishing joint tasks, strengthening social connection, and influencing partners' behavior. These functions derive from first principles, emerge from each other, and are accomplished by some forms of synchrony more than others. Effective synchrony flexibly adapts to social goals and more synchrony is not always better. Our synthesis offers a shared framework and language for the field, allowing for better cross-context and cross-behavior comparisons, generating new hypotheses, and highlighting future research directions.

Inhibiting responses under the watch of a recently synchronized peer increases self-monitoring: evidence from functional near-infrared spectroscopy

Developing motor synchrony with a peer (through interventions such as the mirror game) can yield collaborative, cognitive and social benefits. However, it is also well established that observation by an audience can improve cognition. The combined and relative advantages offered by motor synchronization and audience effects are not yet understood. It is important to address this gap to determine the extent to which synchronizing activities might interact with the positive effects of an audience. In this preregistered study, we investigate the extent to which response inhibition may be improved when observed by a peer after motor synchronization with this peer. We compare behavioural and cortical (functional near-infrared spectroscopy; fNIRS) measures of inhibition between synchronized and non-synchronized dyads and find that the presence of a synchronized peer-audience introduces a speed-accuracy trade-off, consisting of slower reaction times and improved accuracy. This co-occurs with cortical activation in bilateral inferior frontal and middle prefrontal cortices, which are implicated in monitoring and maintenance of social alignment. Our findings have implications for carers and support people, who may benefit from synchronizing activities for rehabilitating inhibition and social skills in clinical settings.

Classifying interpersonal synchronization states using a data-driven approach: implications for social interaction understanding

This study presents a data-driven approach to identifying interpersonal motor synchrony states by analyzing hand movements captured from a 3D depth camera. Utilizing a single frame from the experiment, an XGBoost machine learning model was employed to differentiate between spontaneous and intentional synchrony modes with nearly [Formula: see text] accuracy. Our findings demonstrate a consistent pattern across subjects, revealing that movement velocity tends to be slower in synchrony modes. These insights support the notion that the relationship between velocity and synchrony is influenced by the cognitive load required for the task, with slower movements leading to higher synchrony in tasks demanding higher cognitive load. This work not only contributes to the limited literature on algorithms for identifying interpersonal synchrony but also has potential implications for developing new metrics to assess real-time human social interactions, understanding social interaction, and diagnosing and developing treatment strategies for social deficits associated with conditions such as Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Multimodal Approach for Characterizing the Quality of Parent-Child Interaction: A Single Synchronization Source May Not Tell the Whole Story

The interaction between the parent and child is essential for the child's cognitive and emotional development and sets the path for future well-being. These interactions, starting from birth, are necessary for providing the sensory stimulation the child needs in the critical time window of brain development. The characterization of parent-child interactions is traditionally performed by human decoding. This approach is considered the leading and most accurate way of characterizing the quality of these interactions. However, the development of computational tools and especially the concept of parent-child synchronization opened up an additional source of data characterizing these interactions in an objective, less human-labor manner. Such sources include brain-to-brain, voice/speech, eye contact, motor, and heart-rate synchronization. However, can a single source synchronization dataset accurately represent parent-child interaction? Will attending to the same stimulation, often resulting in a higher brain-to-brain synchronization, be considered an interactive condition? In this perspective, we will try to convey a new concept of the child-parent interaction synchronization (CHIPS) matrix, which includes the different sources of signals generated during an interaction. Such a model may assist in explaining the source of interaction alterations in the case of child/parent developmental/emotional or sensory deficits and may open up new ways of assessing interventions and changes in parent-child interactions along development. We will discuss this interaction during one of the parent-child joint activities providing opportunities for interaction, i.e., storytelling.

Cross-Correlation- and Entropy-Based Measures of Movement Synchrony: Non-Convergence of Measures Leads to Different Associations with Depressive Symptoms

BACKGROUND

Several algorithms have been proposed to quantify synchronization. However, little is known about their convergent and predictive validity.

METHODS

The sample included 30 persons who completed a manualized interview focusing on psychosomatic symptoms. The intensity of body motions was measured using motion-energy analysis. We computed several measures of movement synchrony based on the time series of the interviewer and participant: mutual information, windowed cross-recurrence analysis, cross-correlation, rMEA, SUSY, SUCO, WCLC-PP and WCLR-PP. Depressive symptoms were assessed with the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ9).

RESULTS

According to the explorative factor analyses, all the variants of cross-correlation and all the measures of SUSY, SUCO and rMEA-WCC led to similar synchrony measures and could be assigned to the same factor. All the mutual-information measures, rMEA-WCLC, WCLC-PP-F, WCLC-PP-R2, WCLR-PP-F, and WinCRQA-DET loaded on the second factor. Depressive symptoms correlated negatively with WCLC-PP-F and WCLR-PP-F and positively with rMEA-WCC, SUCO-ES-CO, and MI-Z.

CONCLUSION

More standardization efforts are needed because different synchrony measures have little convergent validity, which can lead to contradictory conclusions concerning associations between depressive symptoms and movement synchrony using the same dataset.

There is chemistry in social chemistry

Nonhuman terrestrial mammals sniff themselves and each other to decide who is friend or foe. Humans also sniff themselves and each other, but the function of this is unknown. Because humans seek friends who are similar to themselves, we hypothesized that humans may smell themselves and others to subconsciously estimate body odor similarity, which, in turn, may promote friendship. To test this, we recruited nonromantic same-sex friend dyads and harvested their body odor. We found that objective ratings obtained with an electronic nose, and subjective ratings obtained from independent human smellers converged to suggest that friends smell more similar to each other than random dyads. Last, we recruited complete strangers, smelled them with an electronic nose, and engaged them in nonverbal same-sex dyadic interactions. We observed that dyads who smelled more similar had more positive dyadic interactions. In other words, we could predict social bonding with an electronic nose. We conclude that there is indeed chemistry in social chemistry.

Liking as a balance between synchronization, complexity and novelty

Synchronization has been identified as a key aspect in social bonding. While synchronization could be maximized by increasing the predictability of an interaction, such predictability is in tension with individuals’ level of interest, which is tied to the interaction’s complexity and novelty. In this study, we tested the interplay between synchronization and interest. We asked 104 female dyads to play the Mirror Game, in which they had to move their hands as coordinately as possible, and then report how much they liked each other. Utilizing information theory and video processing tools, we found that a combination of movement synchronization and complexity explained liking almost two times better than movement synchronization alone. Moreover, we found that people initiated novel and challenging interactions, even though they paid a price—being less synchronized. Examining the interactions’ dynamics, we found that people who liked each other moved in a more synchronized, complex, and novel manner during most of the interaction. This suggests that in addition to synchronization, maintaining interest may be critical for positive social bonding. Thus, we propose a new framework in which balancing synchronization and interest, rather than merely maximizing synchronization, optimizes the interaction quality.

Language and Movement Synchronization in Dyadic Psychotherapeutic Interaction - A Qualitative Review and a Proposal for a Classification

In individual psychotherapy verbal communication and movement synchronization are closely interrelated. The microanalysis of timing, rhythm and gestalt of movement has established dynamic movement coordination as a systemic property of the dyadic interaction. Movement synchronization supports and enhances the unfolding of linguistic meaning. In order to substantiate the importance of the concept of synchrony for adult psychotherapy we review evidence from developmental psychology and discuss approaches to measure synchrony with particular reference to the naturalistic setting of dyadic psychotherapy. As the concept of synchrony is still ambiguous, and the respective interactional phenomena are ephemeral and fluid, in the current paper we suggest a set of five criteria for the description of synchronization in general terms and eight additional criteria which specifically enable the description of phenomena of movement synchronization. The five general dimensions are: (1) context, (2) modality, (3) resources, (4) entrainment, and (5) time-lag. The eight categories for the description of movement synchrony are: (1) spatial direction, (2) amplitude, (3) sinuosity, (4) duration, (5) event structure, (6) phase, (7) frequency, and (8) content. To understand the process of participatory sense-making and the emergence of meaning in psychotherapy, synchrony research has to cope with the multimodality of the embodied interaction. This requires an integrated perspective of movement and language. A system for the classification of synchrony phenomena may contribute to the linking of variations and patterns of movement with language and linguistic utterances.

Therapeuteneffekte bei der ambulanten Behandlung sozialer Ängste

Hintergrund

Die Studie untersuchte Therapeuteneffekte bei der Psychotherapie der sozialen Angststörung unter Verwendung von 3 methodischen Ansätzen: 1. Varianzen zufälliger Effekte, 2. Effekte soziodemografischer Variablen und 3. eine Disaggregation von therapeutischer Beziehung und nonverbaler Synchronisation in einen „Between“- und einen „Within“-Anteil der Therapeutenvarianz sowie deren Vorhersage des Outcome.

Material und Methoden

Die Patienten wurden mit manualisierter supportiver-expressiver Therapie (n = 54), manualisierter kognitiver Verhaltenstherapie (n = 102) oder naturalistischer kognitiver Verhaltenstherapie (n = 111) behandelt (insgesamt n = 267). Es wurden Patientenbeurteilungen interpersonaler Probleme (Inventar zur Erfassung interpersonaler Probleme, IIP-32), von Depressionssymptomen (Beck-Depressions-Inventar, BDI) und der therapeutischen Beziehung (Helping Alliance Questionnaire, HAQ) erfasst. Die nonverbale Synchronisation wurde mithilfe der Motion Energy Analysis und zeitreihenanalytischer Verfahren quantifiziert. Die Zusammenhangsanalysen erfolgten mit Mehrebenenmodellen.

Ergebnisse

Alter und Geschlecht des Therapeuten waren nicht prädiktiv für die zum Therapieende gemessenen IIP-32- und BDI-Werte. Therapeuteneffekte in Form zufälliger Effekte (Intra-Klassen-Korrelation [ICC] = 23,4 % bzw. 30,1 %) erklärten ein Vielfaches mehr an Outcome-Varianz als das Therapieverfahren (ICC = 6 % bzw. ICC = 1,6 %). Bei der nonverbalen Synchronisation waren Between-therapist- und Within-therapist-Anteil mit der Reduktion des IIP-32 assoziiert. Der Between-therapist-Anteil des HAQ sagte eine Reduktion des BDI vorher.

Schlussfolgerung

Bei der Behandlung sozialer Ängste sind Therapeuteneffekte bedeutsamer als das Therapieverfahren. Desgleichen waren die Therapeutenanteile bei den prozessrelevanten Variablen therapeutische Beziehung und nonverbale Synchronisation bedeutsamer als die patienten- bzw. dyadenspezifischen Anteile.