Reciprocity and alignment: quantifying coupling in dynamic interactions

Abstract

Recent accounts of social cognition focus on how we do things together, suggesting that becoming aligned relies on a reciprocal exchange of information. The next step is to develop richer computational methods that quantify the degree of coupling and describe the nature of the information exchange. We put forward a definition of coupling, comparing it to related terminology and detail, available computational methods and the level of organization to which they pertain, presenting them as a hierarchy from weakest to richest forms of coupling. The rationale is that a temporally coherent link between two dynamical systems at the lowest level of organization sustains mutual adaptation and alignment at the highest level. Postulating that when we do things together, we do so dynamically over time and we argue that to determine and measure instances of true reciprocity in social exchanges is key. Along with this computationally rich definition of coupling, we present challenges for the field to be tackled by a diverse community working towards a dynamic account of social cognition.

Exploring the “Dark Matter” of Social Interaction: Systematic Review of a Decade of Research in Spontaneous Interpersonal Coordination

“…Finally, Varlet et al (2011 were interested in differentiating mechanisms involved in intra-and interpersonal limbs movements. This effort to delineate these different concepts echoes other attempts within the literature (Dumas and Fairhurst, 2019). Nevertheless, these current coexisting labels lead to a jingle-jangle fallacy, as it becomes unclear whether the literature is referring to different phenomena using identical labels (jingle) or describe the same processes but labeled differently (jangle).…”

“…A first set of studies investigated rhythmic activities, such as walking (Cheng et al, 2017(Cheng et al, , 2020, rocking chairs (Demos et al, 2012), finger flexion (Nordham et al, 2018), "body conversation" (Galbusera et al, 2019), or required participants to stay near each other without any conversation or a common goal (Varlet et al, 2011.…”

“…Although this was not always the case, most of the studies presented in this systematic review provided a working definition of interpersonal coordination; however, the wording differed from one study to another. A first set of studies used the terminology interpersonal coordination referring to "dynamical process of self-organization, " "spatiotemporal organization of movement, " or "dynamical entrainment" (Varlet et al, 2011Demos et al, 2012;Fujiwara et al, 2016;Paxton and Dale, 2017;Nordham et al, 2018;Fujiwara et al, 2019;Wiltshire et al, 2019). On the other hand, others used the terminology synchrony, referring to "variables of a system becoming entrained" or as "specious present, " and "smooth meshing in time of the simultaneous rhythmic activity" or "the coordinated overall body movement" of two interacting individuals (Schmidt et al, 2012;Tschacher et al, 2014Tschacher et al, , 2018Abney et al, 2015;Cheng et al, 2017Cheng et al, , 2020Lozza et al, 2018;Galbusera et al, 2019;Sun et al, 2019).…”

“…Grounded in dynamical system theories, Varlet et al (2011, Demos et al (2012), andNordham et al (2018) investigated the influence of perceptual information exchanges between participants while standing in front of each other or conducting rhythmic activities such as rocking chairs or finger flexions. While participants were not instructed to synchronize their movements, all of these studies observed spontaneous entrainment of body movements between individuals and amplified when participants shared perceptual information such as visual or auditory feedback.…”

“…The expansion from highly controlled settings investigating perceptual influences to ecological settings manipulating social contexts unravels the richness and complexity of interpersonal coordination and questions its interpretation as a marker of social affiliation. Studies investigating perceptual influences (Varlet et al, 2011Demos et al, 2012;Nordham et al, 2018) revealed that the simple sharing of sensorimotor information leads to spontaneous interpersonal coordination. Notably, these studies have considered physical properties such as height and weight, often neglected by studies investigating social influence.…”