Understanding social motor coordination

Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 2017

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Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2010

Although evidence has suggested that coordinated action enhances rapport and fosters cooperation, the possibility that it might also influence the ability to pursue joint goals has yet to be demonstrated. We show that rocking in synchrony enhanced individuals' perceptual sensitivity to the motion of other entities and thereby increased their success in a subsequent joint-action task that required the ability to dynamically detect and respond appropriately to a partner's movements. These findings support the view that in addition to fostering social cohesion, synchrony hones the abilities that allow individuals to functionally direct their cooperative motives.

Cognitive Systems Research, 2006

The discovery of mirror neurons has given rise to a number of interpretations of their functions together with speculations on their potential role in the evolution of specifically human capacities. Thus, mirror neurons have been thought to ground many aspects of human social cognition, including the capacity to engage in cooperative collective actions and to understand them. We propose an eval- uation of this latter claim. On the one hand, we will argue that mirror neurons do not by themselves provide a sufficient basis for the forms of agentive understanding and shared intentionality involved in cooperative collective actions. On the other hand, we will also argue that mirror neurons can nevertheless play an important role in an account of the production and understanding of joint action, insofar as they provide the basic constituents of implicit agent-neutral representations and are useful elements in a process of online mutual adjustment of participants’ actions.

Experimental Brain Research, 2011

The current project evaluated the relationship between the stability of intrapersonal coordination and the emergence of spontaneous interpersonal coordination. Participants were organized into pairs, and each participant was instructed to produce either an inphase or antiphase pattern of intrapersonal bimanual coordination using two hand-held pendulums, while simultaneously performing an interpersonal puzzle task. At issue was whether the emergence and stability of spontaneous interpersonal rhythmic coordination is inXuenced by ("Experiment 1") the stability of the intrapersonal coordination patterns produced by coactors and ("Experiment 2") the congruency of the intrapersonal coordination patterns produced by co-actors. The stability of intrapersonal movement coordination did not aVect the emergence of spontaneous interpersonal coordination. The degree of interpersonal coordination observed was similar when both participants in a pair produced either inphase or antiphase patterns of intrapersonal bimanual coordination. Moreover, the congruency of the intrapersonal coordination patterns only slightly aVected the emergence of interpersonal coordination, with only marginally lower inphase interpersonal entrainment when participants produced incongruent patterns of intrapersonal coordination (e.g., inphase-antiphase). Interestingly, movement observation and the emergence of interpersonal coordination did not aVect the stability of intrapersonal bimanual coordination. The results suggest that interlimb rhythmic bimanual coordination reXects a single intrapersonal perceptual-motor synergy and that these bimanual synergies (not individual limbs) are what become spontaneously entrained interpersonally.

Topics in Cognitive Science, 2009

The pull to coordinate with other individuals is fundamental, serving as the basis for our social connectedness to others. Discussed is a dynamical and ecological perspective to joint action, an approach that embeds the individual's mind in a body and the body in a niche, a physical and social environment. Research on uninstructed coordination of simple incidental rhythmic movement, along with research on goal-directed, embodied cooperation, is reviewed. Finally, recent research is discussed that extends the coordination and cooperation studies, examining how synchronizing with another, and how emergent social units of perceiving and acting are reflected in people's feelings of connection to others.

Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance, 2015

The human perceptual-motor system is tightly coupled to the physical and informational dynamics of a task environment. These dynamics operate to constrain the high-dimensional order of the human movement system into low-dimensional, task-specific synergies-functional groupings of structural elements that are temporarily constrained to act as a single coordinated unit. The aim of the current study was to determine whether synergistic processes operate when coacting individuals coordinate to perform a discrete joint-action task. Pairs of participants sat next to each other and each used 1 arm to complete a pointer-to-target task. Using the uncontrolled manifold (UCM) analysis for the first time in a discrete joint action, the structure of joint-angle variance was examined to determine whether there was synergistic organization of the degrees of freedom employed at the interpersonal or intrapersonal levels. The results revealed that the motor actions performed by coactors were synergis...

NeuroImage, 2006

The human mirror neuron system (MNS) has recently been a major topic of research in cognitive neuroscience. As a very basic reflection of the MNS, human observers are faster at imitating a biological as compared with a non-biological movement. However, it is unclear which cortical areas and their interactions (synchronization) are responsible for this behavioural advantage. We investigated the time course of long-range synchronization within cortical networks during an imitation task in 10 healthy participants by means of whole-head magnetoencephalography (MEG). Extending previous work, we conclude that left ventrolateral premotor, bilateral temporal and parietal areas mediate the observed behavioural advantage of biological movements in close interaction with the basal ganglia and other motor areas (cerebellum, sensorimotor cortex). Besides left ventrolateral premotor cortex, we identified the right temporal pole and the posterior parietal cortex as important junctions for the integration of information from different sources in imitation tasks that are controlled for movement (biological vs. non-biological) and that involve a certain amount of spatial orienting of attention. Finally, we also found the basal ganglia to participate at an early stage in the processing of biological movement, possibly by selecting suitable motor programs that match the stimulus.

Scientific Reports

An important open problem in Human Behaviour is to understand how coordination emerges in human ensembles. This problem has been seldom studied quantitatively in the existing literature, in contrast to situations involving dual interaction. Here we study motor coordination (or synchronisation) in a group of individuals where participants are asked to visually coordinate an oscillatory hand motion. We separately tested two groups of seven participants. We observed that the coordination level of the ensemble depends on group homogeneity, as well as on the pattern of visual couplings (who looked at whom). Despite the complexity of social interactions, we show that networks of coupled heterogeneous oscillators with different structures capture well the group dynamics. Our findings are relevant to any activity requiring the coordination of several people, as in music, sport or at work, and can be extended to account for other perceptual forms of interaction such as sound or feel.

Joint actions require the integration of simultaneous self-and other-related behaviour.

Inputs-Outputs '13: Proceedings of the 2013 inputs-outputs conference: An interdisciplinary conference on engagement in HCI and performance, 2013

Social interaction is a core aspect of human life that affects individuals' physical and mental health. Social interaction usually leads to mutual engagement in diverse areas of cognitive, emotional, physiological and physical activity involving both interacting persons and subsequently impacting the outcome of these interactions. A common approach to the analysis of social interaction is the study of the verbal content transmitted between sender and receiver. However, additional important processes and dynamics are occurring in other domains too, for example in the area of nonverbal behaviour. In a series of studies, we have looked at interactional synchrony -- the coordination of two persons' movement patterns -- and its association with relationship quality and with the outcome of interactions. Using a computer-based algorithm, which automatically quantifies a person's body-movement, we were able to objectively calculate interactional synchrony in a large number of dyads interacting in various settings. In a first step, we showed that the phenomenon of interactional synchrony existed at a level that was significantly higher than expected by chance. In a second step, we ascertained that across different settings -- including patient-therapist dyads and healthy subject dyads -- more synchronized movement was associated with better relationship quality and better interactional outcomes. The quality of a relationship is thus embodied by the synchronized movement patterns emerging between partners. Our studies suggested that embodied cognition is a valuable approach to research in social interaction, providing important clues for an improved understanding of interaction dynamics.