No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
On the Same Wavelengths: Emergence of Multiple Synchronies among Multiple Agents
Abstract
People spontaneously synchronize their activities when they interact. This paper models the emergence of interpersonal synchrony by multiple agents with internal cognitive and affective states. In our simulations, one agent was exposed to a repeated stimulus and the other agent started to synchronize consecutively its movements, affects, conscious emotions and verbal actions with the stimulated agent. The behavior displayed by the agents was consistent with theory and empirical evidence from the psychological and neuroscience literature. These results shed new light on the emergence of interpersonal synchrony in a wide variety of settings, from close relationships to psychotherapy. Moreover, the present work could provide a basis for future development of socially responsive virtual agents.
Supplementary resource (1)
... Computational modelling of interpersonal synchrony was already addressed in earlier work such as [13][14][15][16][17]. However, in the models described in [13,14], no (subjective) internal detection of synchrony takes place. ...
... Computational modelling of interpersonal synchrony was already addressed in earlier work such as [13][14][15][16][17]. However, in the models described in [13,14], no (subjective) internal detection of synchrony takes place. Furthermore, in [14] no adaptivity was covered, whereas in [13] another type of adaptivity was incorporated, namely of internal connections from representation states to preparation states. ...
... However, in the models described in [13,14], no (subjective) internal detection of synchrony takes place. Furthermore, in [14] no adaptivity was covered, whereas in [13] another type of adaptivity was incorporated, namely of internal connections from representation states to preparation states. As far as we know, [15][16][17] describe the only publications on other computational models where subjective synchrony detection is addressed in relation to affiliation. ...
Interpersonal synchrony is associated with better interpersonal affiliation. No matter how well-affiliated people are, interruptions or transitions in synchrony rebound to occur. One might intuitively expect that transitions in synchrony negatively affect affiliation or liking. Empirical evidence, however, suggests that time periods with interruptions in synchrony may favor affiliation or liking even more than time periods without interruptions in synchrony. This paper introduces a controlled adaptive network model to explain how persons’ affiliation might benefit from transitions in synchrony over and above mean levels of synchrony. The adaptive network model was evaluated in a series of simulation experiments for two persons with a setup in which a number of scenarios were encountered in different (time) episodes. Our controlled adaptive network model may serve as a foundation for more realistic virtual agents with regard to synchrony transitions and their role in affiliation.KeywordsControlled adaptive network modelInterpersonal synchronySynchrony transitionsLikingAffiliation
... The work presented here has adopted some elements of earlier work. For example, modeling of the emergence of synchrony during social interaction between agents was addressed in earlier work such as (Hendrikse, Treur, Wilderjans, Dikker, & Koole, 2022a;Hendrikse et al., 2023a). However, in these models no (subjective) internal detection of synchrony was incorporated and in (Hendrikse et al., 2022a) no adaptivity was modeled, whereas in (Hendrikse et al., 2023a) another type of adaptivity was captured: of internal responding connections from representation to preparation. ...
... For example, modeling of the emergence of synchrony during social interaction between agents was addressed in earlier work such as (Hendrikse, Treur, Wilderjans, Dikker, & Koole, 2022a;Hendrikse et al., 2023a). However, in these models no (subjective) internal detection of synchrony was incorporated and in (Hendrikse et al., 2022a) no adaptivity was modeled, whereas in (Hendrikse et al., 2023a) another type of adaptivity was captured: of internal responding connections from representation to preparation. The idea of subjective synchrony detection in an agent-based model was introduced in (Hendrikse et al, 2023c) and subsequently the distinction between short-term and long-term behavioural adaptivity was introduced in (Hendrikse, Treur, Wilderjans, Dikker, & Koole, 2022b) and (Hendrikse et al., 2023b). ...
Awarded the BICA*AI 2022 Best Innovative Research Award.
For a video presentation, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi-ptLRGC3Q. During interaction, humans often adapt their behaviour toward each other. This behavioural adaptivity may concern short-term effects such as affiliation but also long-term effects such as bonding. Interaction can involve different modalities such as movement, affect and verbal actions. Central mechanisms in the causal pathways for interaction show adaptivity, for example, in the form of adaptive connections or adaptive excitability thresholds. An interesting issue that is often left unaddressed is which of these mechanisms are specific for the other person and which are other-person independent. The focus of this paper is on this issue. In theories such as attachment theory, it is claimed that adaptations acquired in one relationship also have their effects in other relationships. Therefore, it makes sense to assume that at least part of the considered behavioural adaptivity is other-person-independent. With this assumption as point of departure, it is analysed computationally how an interplay of adaptive other-person-specific and other-person independent mechanisms occurs within the causal pathways leading to behavioural adaptivity. As part of this, it is investigated which learning or adaptation principles can apply to the mechanisms within the different types of pathways mentioned above. This will cover both person-independent adaptation and person-specific learning and also control of these types of adaptation (e.g., adaptive speed of adaptation) which is sometimes termed higher-order adaptation. As pathways in general involve connections between states and excitabilities of states, from neuroscience both synaptic and nonsynaptic forms of plasticity are covered (e.g., Hebbian learning and adaptive excitability thresholds, respectively) and metaplasticity to control them. The model is evaluated by a number of explored scenarios where within a group of four agents each agent randomly has episodes of interaction with one of the three other agents and due to these episodes displays both short-term and long-term behavioural adaptivity.
... The designed adaptive agent model can be used as a kind of engine for virtual agents that are able to synchronise with humans and to show how they can connect in a human-like manner. The introduction of the subjective synchrony detector states is one of the distinctions from earlier work, such as [9,10]. ...
In: Human-Centric Intelligent Systems (https://www.springer.com/journal/44230). For a video presentation, see https://youtu.be/LVXOgybbawA. It has been found that interpersonal synchronization leads to more closeness, mutual coordination, alliance, or affiliation between the synchronized persons. Such literature reveals a pathway from interpersonal interaction to interpersonal synchronisation to interpersonal affiliation. If persons act on temporal patterns of synchrony, this suggests that they possess a facility to detect such patterns. Therefore in this paper the assumption was made that persons indeed detect when temporal patterns of synchrony occur and from such detection a stronger affiliation or connection may grow. By multiple simulation experiments for stochastic stimuli from the environment, it was found that indeed several expected types of patterns are reproduced computationally. An earlier version of this work was presented in an informal manner at the scientific meeting Face2Face: Advancing the Science of Social Interaction at the Royal Society in London (April 4-5, 2022) and at the conference JCRAI'22 (October 14-16, 2022). After the work was finished, further research was performed addressing the interplay of subjective synchrony detection with short-term affiliation and long-term bonding (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361355421), the use of time lags for subjective synchrony detection (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362809655), and the role of detected transitions of synchrony for behavioural adaptivity (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361435085).
In this paper a generic computational architecture for social interaction adaptivity and attunement is presented that was developed based on unification of a number of specific case studies addressed earlier. This architecture describes a generic multilevel multi-timescale adaptive dynamical system and is formalised and represented as a multi-order self-modeling network. It is shown how this architecture covers different earlier case studies addressing social interaction adaptivity and attunement subsuming synchrony-induced or homophily-induced adaptivity. Moreover, it is shown how based on it a new application to the design of bonding bots is realised that supports interpersonal emotion regulation via adaptive human-bot interaction and attunement. A central focus in this paper is on unification of the contributions in our research line on computational methods for social interaction science. The emphasis is on modeling and analysis of multimodal mental and social interaction dynamics adaptivity and attunement as occurs in affiliation and bonding from underlying causal mechanisms and pathways. The paper will contribute a unified computational architecture that covers several case studies analysed in the past and was also evaluated based on a new analysis to design bonding bots that interact with humans in order to obtain interpersonal emotion regulation.
Deep Learning (DL), a groundbreaking branch of Machine Learning (ML), has emerged as a driving force in both theoretical and applied Artificial Intelligence (AI). DL algorithms, rooted in complex and non-linear artificial neural systems, excel at extracting high-level features from data. DL has demonstrated human-level performance in real-world tasks, including clinical diagnostics, and has unlocked solutions to previously intractable problems in virtual agent design, robotics, genomics, neuroimaging, computer vision, and industrial automation. In this paper, the most relevant advances from the last few years in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and several applications to neuroscience, neuroimaging, computer vision, and robotics are presented, reviewed and discussed. In this way, we summarize the state-of-the-art in AI methods, models and applications within a collection of works presented at the 9th International Conference on the Interplay between Natural and Artificial Computation (IWINAC). The works presented in this paper are excellent examples of new scientific discoveries made in laboratories that have successfully transitioned to real-life applications.
Caregiver touch plays a vital role in infants’ growth and development, but its role as a communicative signal in human parent-infant interactions is surprisingly poorly understood. Here, we assessed whether touch and proximity in caregiver-infant dyads are related to neural and physiological synchrony. We simultaneously measured brain activity and respiratory sinus arrhythmia of 4- to 6-month-old infants and their mothers (N=69 dyads) in distal and proximal joint watching conditions as well as in an interactive face-to-face condition. Neural synchrony was higher during the proximal than during the distal joint watching conditions, and even higher during the face-to-face interaction. Physiological synchrony was highest during the face-to-face interaction and lower in both joint watching conditions, irrespective of proximity. Maternal affectionate touch during the face-to-face interaction was positively related to neural but not physiological synchrony. This is the first evidence that touch mediates mutual attunement of brain activities, but not cardio-respiratory rhythms in caregiver-infant dyads during naturalistic interactions. Our results also suggest that neural synchrony serves as a biological pathway of how social touch plays into infant development and how this pathway could be utilized to support infant learning and social bonding.
Ten years ago, Perspectives in Psychological Science published the Mirror Neuron Forum, in which authors debated the role of mirror neurons in action understanding, speech, imitation, and autism and asked whether mirror neurons are acquired through visual-motor learning. Subsequent research on these themes has made significant advances, which should encourage further, more systematic research. For action understanding, multivoxel pattern analysis, patient studies, and brain stimulation suggest that mirror-neuron brain areas contribute to low-level processing of observed actions (e.g., distinguishing types of grip) but not to high-level action interpretation (e.g., inferring actors’ intentions). In the area of speech perception, although it remains unclear whether mirror neurons play a specific, causal role in speech perception, there is compelling evidence for the involvement of the motor system in the discrimination of speech in perceptually noisy conditions. For imitation, there is strong evidence from patient, brain-stimulation, and brain-imaging studies that mirror-neuron brain areas play a causal role in copying of body movement topography. In the area of autism, studies using behavioral and neurological measures have tried and failed to find evidence supporting the “broken-mirror theory” of autism. Furthermore, research on the origin of mirror neurons has confirmed the importance of domain-general visual-motor associative learning rather than canalized visual-motor learning, or motor learning alone.
Social interactive learning denotes the ability to acquire new information from a conspecific – a prerequisite for cultural evolution and survival. As inspired by recent neurophysiological research, here we tested whether social interactive learning can be augmented by exogenously synchronizing oscillatory brain activity across an instructor and a learner engaged in a naturalistic song-learning task. We used a dual brain stimulation protocol entailing the trans-cranial delivery of synchronized electric currents in two individuals simultaneously. When we stimulated inferior frontal brain regions, with 6 Hz alternating currents being in-phase between the instructor and the learner, the dyad exhibited spontaneous and synchronized body movement. Remarkably, this stimulation also led to enhanced learning performance. These effects were both phase- and frequency-specific: 6 Hz anti-phase stimulation, or 10 Hz in-phase stimulation, did not yield comparable results. Furthermore, a mediation analysis disclosed that interpersonal movement synchrony acted as a partial mediator of the effect of dual brain stimulation on learning performance, i.e. possibly facilitating the effect of dual brain stimulation on learning. Our results provide a causal demonstration that inter-brain synchronization is a sufficient condition to improve real-time information transfer between pairs of individuals.
Plasticity is a crucial adaptive characteristic of the brain. Relatively recently mecha-nisms have been found showing that plasticity itself is controlled by what is called metaplasticity. In this paper, a modeling environment is introduced to develop and simulate reified temporal-causal network models that can be applied for cognitive agent models. It is shown how this environment is a useful tool to model plasticity combined with metaplasticity. The model shows how in a context-sensitive, dynamic manner learning can be accelerated, but also can be reduced to obtain a stable situation.
Videos of lectures on several chapters of this book can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtJH8O7BvdydRVu9RXuhdtAo2S2wMPtgp. For more applications, see the Self-Modeling Networks channel at https://www.youtube.com/@self-modelingnetworks4255. This book addresses the challenging topic of modeling (multi-order) adaptive dynamical systems, which often have inherently complex behaviour. This is addressed by using their network representations. Networks by themselves usually can be modeled using a neat, declarative and conceptually transparent Network-Oriented Modeling approach. For adaptive networks changing the network’s structure, it is different; often separate procedural specifications are added for the adaptation process. This leaves you with a less transparent, hybrid specification, part of which often is more at a programming level than at a modeling level. This book presents an overall Network-Oriented Modeling approach by which designing adaptive network models becomes much easier, as also the adaptation processes are modeled in a neat, declarative and conceptually transparent network-oriented manner, like the base network itself. Due to this dedicated overall Network-Oriented Modeling approach, no procedural, algorithmic or programming skills are needed to design complex adaptive network models.
A dedicated software environment is available to run these adaptive network models from their high-level specifications. Moreover, as adaptive networks are described in a network format as well, the approach can simply be applied iteratively, so that higher-order adaptive networks in which network adaptation itself is adaptive too, can be modeled just as easily; for example, this can be applied to model metaplasticity from Cognitive Neuroscience. The usefulness of this approach is illustrated in the book by many examples of complex (higher-order) adaptive network models for a wide variety of biological, mental and social processes.
The book has been written with multidisciplinary Master and Ph.D. students in mind without assuming much prior knowledge, although also some elementary mathematical analysis is not completely avoided. The detailed presentation makes that it can be used as an introduction in Network-Oriented Modelling for adaptive networks. Sometimes overlap between chapters can be found in order to make it easier to read each chapter separately. In each of the chapters, in the Discussion section, specific publications and authors are indicated that relate to the material presented in the chapter. The specific mathematical details concerning difference and differential equations have been concentrated in Chapters 10 to 15 in Part IV and Part V, which easily can be skipped if desired. For a modeler who just wants to use this modeling approach, Chapters 1 to 9 provide a good introduction.
The material in this book is being used in teaching undergraduate and graduate students with a multidisciplinary background or interest. Lecturers can contact me for additional material such as slides, assignments, and software. Videos of lectures for many of the chapters can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Nqp_dEIipU&list=PLF-Ldc28P1zUjk49iRnXYk4R-Jm4lkv2b.
At the heart of emotion, mood, and any other emotionally charged event are states experienced as simply feeling good or bad, energized or enervated. These states - called core affect - influence reflexes, perception, cognition, and behavior and are influenced by many causes internal and external, but people have no direct access to these causal connections. Core affect can therefore be experienced as free-floating (mood) or can be attributed to some cause (and thereby begin an emotional episode). These basic processes spawn a broad framework that includes perception of the core-affect-altering properties of stimuli, motives, empathy, emotional meta-experience, and affect versus emotion regulation; it accounts for prototypical emotional episodes, such as fear and anger, as core affect attributed to something plus various nonemotional processes.
This book has been written with a multidisciplinary audience in mind without assuming much prior knowledge. In principle, the detailed presentation in the book makes that it can be used as an introduction in Network-Oriented Modelling for multidisciplinary Master and Ph.D. students. In particular, this implies that, although also some more technical mathematical and formal logical aspects have been addressed within the book, they have been kept minimal, and are presented in a concentrated and easily avoidable manner in Part IV. Much of the material in this book has been and is being used in teaching multidisciplinary undergraduate and graduate students, and based on these experiences the presentation has been improved much. Sometimes some overlap between chapters can be found in order to make it easier to read each chapter separately. Lecturers can contact me for additional material such as slides, assignments, and software
Springer full-text download: http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-45213-5
During psychotherapy, patient and therapist tend to spontaneously synchronize their vocal pitch, bodily movements, and even their physiological processes. In the present article, we consider how this pervasive phenomenon may shed new light on the therapeutic relationship– or alliance– and its role within psychotherapy. We first review clinical research on the alliance and the multidisciplinary area of interpersonal synchrony. We then integrate both literatures in the Interpersonal Synchrony (In-Sync) model of psychotherapy. According to the model, the alliance is grounded in the coupling of patient and therapist’s brains. Because brains do not interact directly, movement synchrony may help to establish inter-brain coupling. Inter-brain coupling may provide patient and therapist with access to another’s internal states, which facilitates common understanding and emotional sharing. Over time, these interpersonal exchanges may improve patients’ emotion-regulatory capacities and related therapeutic outcomes. We discuss the empirical assessment of interpersonal synchrony and review preliminary research on synchrony in psychotherapy. Finally, we summarize our main conclusions and consider the broader implications of viewing psychotherapy as the product of two interacting brains.
Interpersonal autonomic physiology is defined as the relationship between people's physiological dynamics, as indexed by continuous measures of the autonomic nervous system. Findings from this field of study indicate that physiological activity between two or more people can become associated or interdependent, often referred to as physiological synchrony. Physiological synchrony has been found in both new and established relationships across a range of contexts, and it correlates with a number of psychosocial constructs. Given these findings, interpersonal physiological interactions are theorized to be ubiquitous social processes that co-occur with observable behavior. However, this scientific literature is fragmented, making it difficult to evaluate consistency across reports. In an effort to facilitate more standardized scholarly approaches, this systematic review provides a description of existing work in the area and highlights theoretical, methodological, and statistical issues to be addressed in future interpersonal autonomic physiology research.
A constantly changing environment requires precise yet flexible timing of movements. Sensorimotor synchronization (SMS)—the temporal coordination of an action with events in a predictable external rhythm—is a fundamental human skill that contributes to optimal sensory-motor control in daily life. A large body of research related to SMS has focused on adaptive error correction mechanisms that support the synchronization of periodic movements (e.g., finger taps) with events in regular pacing sequences. The results of recent studies additionally highlight the importance of anticipatory mechanisms that support temporal prediction in the context of SMS with sequences that contain tempo changes. To investigate the role of adaptation and anticipatory mechanisms in SMS we introduce ADAM: an ADaptation and Anticipation Model. ADAM combines reactive error correction processes (adaptation) with predictive temporal extrapolation processes (anticipation) inspired by the computational neuroscience concept of internal models. The combination of simulations and experimental manipulations based on ADAM creates a novel and promising approach for exploring adaptation and anticipation in SMS. The current paper describes the conceptual basis and architecture of ADAM.
Pickering and Garrod (2004) argued that alignment is the basis of successful communication in dialogue. In other words, successful
communication goes hand-in-hand with the development of similar representations in the interlocutors. But what exactly does
this mean? In this paper, we attempt to define alignment, contrasting alignment of situation models with alignment of linguistic
representations. We then speculate on how these notions are related and why they lead to conversational success
Collective rituals are present in all known societies, but their function is a matter of long-standing debates. Field observations suggest that they may enhance social cohesion and that their effects are not limited to those actively performing but affect the audience as well. Here we show physiological effects of synchronized arousal in a Spanish fire-walking ritual, between active participants and related spectators, but not participants and other members of the audience. We assessed arousal by heart rate dynamics and applied nonlinear mathematical analysis to heart rate data obtained from 38 participants. We compared synchronized arousal between fire-walkers and spectators. For this comparison, we used recurrence quantification analysis on individual data and cross-recurrence quantification analysis on pairs of participants' data. These methods identified fine-grained commonalities of arousal during the 30-min ritual between fire-walkers and related spectators but not unrelated spectators. This indicates that the mediating mechanism may be informational, because participants and related observers had very different bodily behavior. This study demonstrates that a collective ritual may evoke synchronized arousal over time between active participants and bystanders. It links field observations to a physiological basis and offers a unique approach for the quantification of social effects on human physiology during real-world interactions.
Although evidence has suggested that synchronized movement can foster cooperation, the ability of synchrony to increase costly altruism and to operate as a function of emotional mechanisms remains unexplored. We predicted that synchrony, due to an ability to elicit low-level appraisals of similarity, would enhance a basic compassionate response toward victims of moral transgressions and thereby increase subsequent costly helping behavior on their behalf. Using a manipulation of rhythmic synchrony, we show that synchronous others are not only perceived to be more similar to oneself but also evoke more compassion and altruistic behavior than asynchronous others experiencing the same plight. These findings both support the view that a primary function of synchrony is to mark others as similar to the self and provide the first empirical demonstration that synchrony-induced affiliation modulates emotional responding and altruism.
The temporal coordination of interpersonal behavior is a foundation for effective joint action with synchronized movement moderating core components of person perception and social exchange. Questions remain, however, regarding the precise conditions under which interpersonal synchrony emerges. In particular, with whom do people reliably synchronize their movements? The current investigation explored the effects of arbitrary group membership (i.e., minimal groups) on the emergence of interpersonal coordination. Participants performed a repetitive rhythmic action together with a member of the same or a different minimal group. Of interest was the extent to which participants spontaneously synchronized their movements with those of the target. Results revealed that stable coordination (i.e., in-phase synchrony) was most pronounced when participants interacted with a member of a different minimal group. These findings are discussed with respect to the functional role of interpersonal synchrony and the potential avenues by which the dynamics of rhythmic coordination may be influenced by group status.
What leads people to describe some of their interpersonal relationships as "close" and "warm" and others as "distant" and "cold"? Landau, Meier, and Keefer (2010) proposed that conceptual metaphors facilitate social cognition by allowing people to use knowledge from a relatively concrete (source) domain (e.g., physical distance) in understanding a different, usually more abstract (target) concept (e.g., love). We concur that such a notion of metaphors can greatly enrich the field of social cognition. At the same time, we believe it is important to devote greater theoretical attention to the nature of metaphorical representations in social cognition. We believe that Landau et al. place too much emphasis on sociocognitive metaphors as top-down knowledge structures and pay too little attention to the constraints that shape metaphors from the bottom up. In the present contribution, we highlight important bottom-up constraints, imposed through bodily constraints and social scaffolds. Sociocognitive metaphors do not exist just for mental representation but for action as well. We discuss the relevance of grounding sociocognitive metaphors for broader motivational purposes.
The tendency to mimic and synchronize with others is well established. Although mimicry has been shown to lead to affiliation between co-actors, the effect of interpersonal synchrony on affiliation remains an open question. The authors investigated the relationship by having participants match finger movements with a visual moving metronome. In Experiment 1, affiliation ratings were examined based on the extent to which participants tapped in synchrony with the experimenter. In Experiment 2, synchrony was manipulated. Affiliation ratings were compared for an experimenter who either (a) tapped to a metronome that was synchronous to the participant's metronome, (b) tapped to a metronome that was asynchronous, or (c) did not tap. As hypothesized, in both studies, the degree of synchrony predicted subsequent affiliation ratings. Experiment 3 found that the affiliative effects were unique to interpersonal synchrony.
During social interaction, both participants are continuously active, each modifying their own actions in response to the continuously changing actions of the partner. This continuous mutual adaptation results in interactional synchrony to which both members contribute. Freely exchanging the role of imitator and model is a well-framed example of interactional synchrony resulting from a mutual behavioral negotiation. How the participants' brain activity underlies this process is currently a question that hyperscanning recordings allow us to explore. In particular, it remains largely unknown to what extent oscillatory synchronization could emerge between two brains during social interaction. To explore this issue, 18 participants paired as 9 dyads were recorded with dual-video and dual-EEG setups while they were engaged in spontaneous imitation of hand movements. We measured interactional synchrony and the turn-taking between model and imitator. We discovered by the use of nonlinear techniques that states of interactional synchrony correlate with the emergence of an interbrain synchronizing network in the alpha-mu band between the right centroparietal regions. These regions have been suggested to play a pivotal role in social interaction. Here, they acted symmetrically as key functional hubs in the interindividual brainweb. Additionally, neural synchronization became asymmetrical in the higher frequency bands possibly reflecting a top-down modulation of the roles of model and imitator in the ongoing interaction.
Each relationship has its own personality. Almost immediately after a social interaction begins, verbal and nonverbal behaviors become synchronized. Even in asocial contexts, individuals tend to produce utterances that match the grammatical structure of sentences they have recently heard or read. Three projects explore language style matching (LSM) in everyday writing tasks and professional writing. LSM is the relative use of 9 function word categories (e.g., articles, personal pronouns) between any 2 texts. In the first project, 2 samples totaling 1,744 college students answered 4 essay questions written in very different styles. Students automatically matched the language style of the target questions. Overall, the LSM metric was internally consistent and reliable across writing tasks. Women, participants of higher socioeconomic status, and students who earned higher test grades matched with targets more than others did. In the second project, 74 participants completed cliffhanger excerpts from popular fiction. Judges' ratings of excerpt-response similarity were related to content matching but not function word matching, as indexed by LSM. Further, participants were not able to intentionally increase style or content matching. In the final project, an archival study tracked the professional writing and personal correspondence of 3 pairs of famous writers across their relationships. Language matching in poetry and letters reflected fluctuations in the relationships of 3 couples: Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, and Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Implications for using LSM as an implicit marker of social engagement and influence are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).
Integrated physiological systems under neural control, such as the cardiac and respiratory systems, exhibit complex dynamics with continuous noisy fluctuations even in resting “equilibrium” conditions without external perturbations (1, 2). Advances in analytic methods have made it possible to identify a surprisingly robust temporal organization embedded in physiologic fluctuations, characterized by scale-invariant (fractal), multifractal, and nonlinear features over a range of time scales (2–4). This behavior is remarkably different from the one post ulated by the classical principle of homeostasis (5), and it resembles the dynamics of certain physical systems away from equilibrium (6).
Pregnant mothers often report a special awareness of and bonding with their unborn child. Little is known about this relationship although it may offer potential for the assessment of the fetal condition. Recently we found evidence of short epochs of fetal-maternal heart rate synchronization under uncontrolled conditions with spontaneous maternal breathing. Here, we examine whether the occurrence of such epochs can be influenced by maternal respiratory arrhythmia induced by paced breathing at several different rates (10, 12, 15, and 20 cycles per minute). To test for such weak and nonstationary synchronizations among the fetal-maternal subsystems, we apply a multivariate synchronization analysis technique and test statistics based on twin surrogates. We find a clear increase in synchronization epochs mostly at high maternal respiratory rates in the original but not in the surrogate data. On the other hand, fewer epochs are found at low respiratory rates both in original and surrogate data. The results suggest that the fetal cardiac system seems to possess the capability to adjust its rate of activation in response to external--i.e., maternal--stimulation. Hence, the pregnant mothers' special awareness to the unborn child may also be reflected by fetal-maternal interaction of cardiac activity. Our approach opens up the chance to examine this interaction between independent but closely linked physiological systems.
Armies, churches, organizations, and communities often engage in activities-for example, marching, singing, and dancing-that lead group members to act in synchrony with each other. Anthropologists and sociologists have speculated that rituals involving synchronous activity may produce positive emotions that weaken the psychological boundaries between the self and the group. This article explores whether synchronous activity may serve as a partial solution to the free-rider problem facing groups that need to motivate their members to contribute toward the collective good. Across three experiments, people acting in synchrony with others cooperated more in subsequent group economic exercises, even in situations requiring personal sacrifice. Our results also showed that positive emotions need not be generated for synchrony to foster cooperation. In total, the results suggest that acting in synchrony with others can increase cooperation by strengthening social attachment among group members.
A 'simulation' theory of cognitive function can be based on three assumptions about brain function. First, behaviour can be simulated by activating motor structures, as during an overt action but suppressing its execution. Second, perception can be simulated by internal activation of sensory cortex, as during normal perception of external stimuli. Third, both overt and covert actions can elicit perceptual simulation of their normal consequences. A large body of evidence supports these assumptions. It is argued that the simulation approach can explain the relations between motor, sensory and cognitive functions and the appearance of an inner world.
Traditional mechanistic accounts of language processing derive almost entirely from the study of monologue. Yet, the most natural and basic form of language use is dialogue. As a result, these accounts may only offer limited theories of the mechanisms that underlie language processing in general. We propose a mechanistic account of dialogue, the interactive alignment account, and use it to derive a number of predictions about basic language processes. The account assumes that, in dialogue, the linguistic representations employed by the interlocutors become aligned at many levels, as a result of a largely automatic process. This process greatly simplifies production and comprehension in dialogue. After considering the evidence for the interactive alignment model, we concentrate on three aspects of processing that follow from it. It makes use of a simple interactive inference mechanism, enables the development of local dialogue routines that greatly simplify language processing, and explains the origins of self-monitoring in production. We consider the need for a grammatical framework that is designed to deal with language in dialogue rather than monologue, and discuss a range of implications of the account.
The current study investigated the interpersonal coordination that occurred between two people when sitting side-by-side in rocking chairs. In two experiments participant pairs rocked in chairs that had the same or different natural periods. By instructing pairs to coordinate their movements inphase or antiphase, Experiment 1 investigated whether the stable patterns of intentional interpersonal coordination were consistent with the dynamics of within person interlimb coordination. By instructing the participants to rock at their own preferred tempo, Experiment 2 investigated whether the rocking chair movements of visually coupled individuals would become unintentionally coordinated. The degree to which the participants fixated on the movements of their co-actor was also manipulated to examine whether visual focus modulates the strength of interpersonal coordination. As expected, the patterns of coordination observed in both experiments demonstrated that the intentional and unintentional interpersonal coordination of rocking chair movements is constrained by the self-organizing dynamics of a coupled oscillator system. The results of the visual focus manipulations indicate that the stability of a visual interpersonal coupling is mediated by attention and the degree to which an individual is able to detect information about a co-actor's movements.
We report a novel finding on the relation of emotion and language. Covert manipulation of emotional facial posture interacts with sentence valence when measuring the amount of time to judge valence (Experiment 1) and sensibility (Experiment 2) of the sentence. In each case, an emotion-sentence compatibility effect is found: Judgment times are faster when facial posture and sentence valence match than when they mismatch. We interpret the finding using a simulation account; that is, emotional systems contribute to language comprehension much as they do in social interaction. Because the effect was not observed on a lexical decision task using emotion-laden words (Experiment 3), we suggest that the emotion simulation affects comprehension processes beyond initial lexical access.
In this paper we discuss the issue of the processes potentially underlying the emergence of emotional consciousness in the light of theoretical considerations and empirical evidence. First, we argue that componential emotion models, and specifically the Component Process Model (CPM), may be better able to account for the emergence of feelings than basic emotion or dimensional models. Second, we advance the hypothesis that consciousness of emotional reactions emerges when lower levels of processing are not sufficient to cope with the event and regulate the emotional process, particularly when the degree of synchronization between the components reaches a critical level and duration. Third, we review recent neuroscience evidence that bolsters our claim of the central importance of the synchronization of neuronal assemblies at different levels of processing.
Linguistic interaction between two people is the fundamental form of communication, yet almost all research in language use focuses on isolated speakers and listeners. In this innovative work, Garrod and Pickering extend the scope of psycholinguistics beyond individuals by introducing communication as a social activity. Drawing on psychological, linguistic, philosophical and sociological research, they expand their theory that alignment across individuals is the basis of communication, through the model of a 'shared workspace account'. In this workspace, interlocutors are actors who jointly manipulate and control the interaction and develop similar representations of both language and social context, in order to achieve communicative success. The book also explores dialogue within groups, technologies, as well as the role of culture more generally. Providing a new understanding of cognitive representation, this trailblazing work will be highly influential in the fields of linguistics, psychology and cognitive linguistics.
First recognized in 1665 by Christiaan Huygens, synchronization phenomena are abundant in science, nature, engineering and social life. Systems as diverse as clocks, singing crickets, cardiac pacemakers, firing neurons and applauding audiences exhibit a tendency to operate in synchrony. These phenomena are universal and can be understood within a common framework based on modern nonlinear dynamics. The first half of this book describes synchronization without formulae, and is based on qualitative intuitive ideas. The main effects are illustrated with experimental examples and figures, and the historical development is outlined. The remainder of the book presents the main effects of synchronization in a rigorous and systematic manner, describing classical results on synchronization of periodic oscillators, and recent developments in chaotic systems, large ensembles, and oscillatory media. This comprehensive book will be of interest to a broad audience, from graduate students to specialist researchers in physics, applied mathematics, engineering and natural sciences.
When we clap our hands in synchrony, feel the sadness of a friend, or match our attitudes to peer norms, we align our behavior with others. We propose here a model that views synchronized movement, emotional contagion, and social conformity as interrelated processes that rely on shared neural networks. Building on the predictive coding framework, we suggest that social alignment is mediated by a three-component feedback loop – an error-monitoring system that reacts to misalignment, an alignment system, and a reward system that is activated when alignment is achieved. We describe herding-related syndromes (autism, loneliness) and call for innovative research to investigate the links between the levels of alignment.
Putting feelings into words, or “affect labeling,” can attenuate our emotional experiences. However, unlike explicit emotion regulation techniques, affect labeling may not even feel like a regulatory process as it occurs. Nevertheless, research investigating affect labeling has found it produces a pattern of effects like those seen during explicit emotion regulation, suggesting affect labeling is a form of implicit emotion regulation. In this review, we will outline research on affect labeling, comparing it to reappraisal, a form of explicit emotion regulation, along four major domains of effects—experiential, autonomic, neural, and behavioral—that establish it as a form of implicit emotion regulation. This review will then speculate on possible mechanisms driving affect labeling effects and other remaining unanswered questions.
This chapter deals with understanding other people's behavior through the application of Neurophysiology and Developmental Psychology. It explains that humans' mindreading skills might be dependent on an action-observation matching system. It presents the functional properties of the Area F5 and mirror neurons by examining the premotor cortex of a Macaque monkey and how this mirror system is present in humans as well, followed by a discussion of the role of mirror neurons in the process of mindreading. It identifies two theories of mindreading: theory-theory (TT) and simulation theory (ST), with ST claiming that an individual uses his or her own mental functions in order to determine the mental states of others; also included is a debate of whether nonhuman primates are mindreaders or behaviorists.
Evidence for synaptic homeostatic plasticity has been gathered in systems including mammalian cortical neurons and the neuromuscular junction of Drosophila melanogaster. Manipulations that either increase or decrease synaptic activity are accompanied by alterations in synaptic strength over the course of several hours that counteract the changes in activity. Manipulations in vitro include the use of antagonists of excitatory and inhibitory synaptic transmission or pharmacological agents that increase or decrease intrinsic excitability of presynaptic neurons. Synaptic homeostasis has also been observed in vivo in response to changes in network activity due to sensory experience, pharmacological agents or genetic manipulations. Synaptic strength is correlated with the shape and size of pre-synaptic structures (such as the neuromuscular bouton) and post-synaptic structures (such as dendritic spines). This has enabled the characterization of homeostatic synaptic plasticity in terms of the quantity and size of these structures, which is an example of a more general phenomenon known as structural plasticity (see Kirov & Harris, 1999).
Scitation is the online home of leading journals and conference proceedings from AIP Publishing and AIP Member Societies
Emotions and actions are powerfully contagious; when we see someone laugh, cry, show disgust, or experience pain, in some sense, we share that emotion. When we see someone in distress, we share that distress. When we see a great actor, musician or sportsperson perform at the peak of their abilities, it can feel like we are experiencing just something of what they are experiencing. Yet only recently, with the discover of mirror neurons, has it become clear just how this powerful sharing of experience is realised within the human brain. This book provides, for the first time, a systematic overview of mirror neurons, written by the man who first discovered them.
In the early 1990's Giacomo Rizzolatti and his co-workers at the University of Parma discovered that some neurons had a surprising property. They responded not only when a subject performed a given action, but also when the subject observed someone else performing that same action. These results had a deep impact on cognitive neuroscience, leading the neuroscientist vs Ramachandran to predict that 'mirror neurons would do for psychology what DNA did for biology'. The unexpected properties of these neurons have not only attracted the attention of neuroscientists. Many sociologists, anthropologists, and even artists have been fascinated by mirror neurons. The director and playwright Peter Brook stated that mirror neurons throw new light on the mysterious link that is created each time actors take the stage and face their audience - the sight of a great actor performing activates in the brain of the observer the very same areas that are active in the performer - including both their actions and their emotions.
Preface 1. Introduction Part I. Synchronization Without Formulae: 2. Basic notions: the self-sustained oscillator and its phase 3. Synchronization of a periodic oscillator by external force 4. Synchronization of two and many oscillators 5. Synchronization of chaotic systems 6. Detecting synchronization in experiments Part II. Phase Locking and Frequency Entrainment: 7. Synchronization of periodic oscillators by periodic external action 8. Mutual synchronization of two interacting periodic oscillators 9. Synchronization in the presence of noise 10. Phase synchronization of chaotic systems 11. Synchronization in oscillatory media 12. Populations of globally coupled oscillators Part III. Synchronization of Chaotic Systems: 13. Complete synchronization I: basic concepts 14. Complete synchronization II: generalizations and complex systems 15. Synchronization of complex dynamics by external forces Appendix 1. Discovery of synchronization by Christiaan Huygens Appendix 2. Instantaneous phase and frequency of a signal References Index.
Sensorimotor synchronization (SMS) is the coordination of rhythmic movement with an external rhythm, ranging from finger tapping in time with a metronome to musical ensemble performance. An earlier review (Repp, 2005) covered tapping studies; two additional reviews (Repp, 2006a, b) focused on music performance and on rate limits of SMS, respectively. The present article supplements and extends these earlier reviews by surveying more recent research in what appears to be a burgeoning field. The article comprises four parts, dealing with (1) conventional tapping studies, (2) other forms of moving in synchrony with external rhythms (including dance and nonhuman animals' synchronization abilities), (3) interpersonal synchronization (including musical ensemble performance), and (4) the neuroscience of SMS. It is evident that much new knowledge about SMS has been acquired in the last 7 years.
How people assign mental states to others and how they represent or conceptualize such states in the first place are topics of interest to philosophy of mind, developmental psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. Three competing answers to the question of how people impute mental states to others have been offered: by rationalizing, by theorizing, or by simulating. Simulation theory says that mindreaders produce mental states in their own minds that resemble, or aim to resemble, those of their targets; these states are then imputed to, or projected onto, the targets. In low-level mindreading, such as reading emotions from faces, simulation is mediated by automatic mirror systems. More controlled processes of simulation, here called "enactment imagination", are used in high-level mindreading. Just as visual and motor imagery are attempts to replicate acts of seeing and doing, mindreading is characteristically an attempt to replicate the mental processes of a target, followed by projection of the imagination-generated state onto the target. Projection errors are symptomatic of simulation, because one's own genuine states readily intrude into the simulational process. A nuanced form of introspection is introduced to explain self-attribution and also to address the question of how mental concepts are represented. A distinctive cognitive code involving introspective representations figures prominently in our concepts of mental states. The book concludes with an overview of the pervasive effects on social life of simulation, imitation, and empathy, and charts their possible roles in moral experience and the fictive arts.
It has long been a staple of psychological theory that early life experiences significantly shape the adult's understanding of and reactions to the social world. Here we consider how early concept development along with evolved motives operating early in life can come to exert a passive, unconscious influence on the human adult's higher-order goal pursuits, judgments, and actions. In particular, we focus on concepts and goal structures specialized for interacting with the physical environment (e.g., distance cues, temperature, cleanliness, and self-protection), which emerge early and automatically as a natural part of human development and evolution. It is proposed that via the process of scaffolding, these early sensorimotor experiences serve as the foundation for the later development of more abstract concepts and goals. Experiments using priming methodologies reveal the extent to which these early concepts serve as the analogical basis for more abstract psychological concepts, such that we come easily and naturally to speak of close relationships, warm personalities, moral purity, and psychological pain. Taken together, this research demonstrates the extent to which such foundational concepts are capable of influencing people's information processing, affective judgments, and goal pursuit, oftentimes outside of their intention or awareness.
We examined how people synchronize their leg movements while walking side-by-side on a treadmill. Walker pairs were either instructed to synchronize their steps in in-phase or in antiphase or received no coordination instructions. Frequency and phase analysis revealed that instructed in-phase and antiphase coordination were equally stable and independent of walking speed and the difference in individually preferred stride frequencies. Without instruction we found episodes of frequency locking in three pairs and episodes of phase locking in four pairs, albeit not always at (or near) 0 degrees or 180 degrees. Again, we found no difference in the stability of in-phase and antiphase coordination and no systematic effects of walking speed and the difference in individually preferred stride frequencies. These results suggest that the Haken-Kelso-Bunz model for rhythmic interlimb coordination does not apply to interpersonal coordination during gait in a straightforward manner. When the typically involved parameter constraints are relaxed, however, this model may largely account for the observed dynamical characteristics.
Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others
- M Iacoboni
Iacoboni, M.: Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others. Farrar,
Straus & Giroux, New York (2008)
A modeling environment for reified temporal-causal networks: modeling plasticity and metaplasticity in cognitive agent models
- J Treur
- M Baldoni
- M Dastani
- B Liao
Treur, J.: A modeling environment for reified temporal-causal networks: modeling plasticity
and metaplasticity in cognitive agent models. In: Baldoni, M., Dastani, M., Liao, B., Sakurai, Y., Zalila Wenkstern, R. (eds.) PRIMA 2019. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 11873, pp. 487-495.
Springer, Cham (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33792-6_33