Are You on My Wavelength? Interpersonal Coordination in Dyadic Conversations

Abstract

Conversation between two people involves subtle nonverbal coordination in addition to speech. However, the precise parameters and timing of this coordination remain unclear, which limits our ability to theorize about the neural and cognitive mechanisms of social coordination. In particular, it is unclear if conversation is dominated by synchronization (with no time lag), rapid and reactive mimicry (with lags under 1 s) or traditionally observed mimicry (with several seconds lag), each of which demands a different neural mechanism. Here we describe data from high-resolution motion capture of the head movements of pairs of participants (n = 31 dyads) engaged in structured conversations. In a preregistered analysis pathway, we calculated the wavelet coherence of head motion within dyads as a measure of their nonverbal coordination and report two novel results. First, lowfrequency coherence (0.2-1.1 Hz) is consistent with traditional observations of mimicry, and modeling shows this behavior is generated by a mechanism with a constant 600 ms lag between leader and follower. This is in line with rapid reactive (rather than predictive or memory-driven) models of mimicry behavior, and could be implemented in mirror neuron systems. Second, we find an unexpected pattern of lower-than-chance coherence between participants, or hypo-coherence, at high frequencies (2.6-6.5 Hz). Exploratory analyses show that this systematic decoupling is driven by fast nodding from the listening member of the dyad, and may be a newly identified social signal. These results provide a step towards the quantification of real-world human behavior in high resolution and provide new insights into the mechanisms of social coordination.

Quantifying the interplay of conversational devices in building mutual understanding

“…Grounding mechanisms are notoriously difficult to manipulate, though some promising directions have been identified. Written chats and virtual reality settings can be employed to surreptitiously manipulate conversations, for instance, by adding repair utterances, or changing the frequency of backchannels (Hale, Ward, Buccheri, Oliver, & Hamilton, 2020;Mills, 2014). At the same time, conversations can be described as complex systems (Fusaroli, Rączaszek-Leonardi, et al, 2014), implying that manipulations of one element are likely to cascade across other elements and any future experiment should acknowledge this.…”

Synchronized affect in shared experiences strengthens social connection

“…Within an interaction, convergence on a shared ontology of communication signals (e.g., facial expressions) may improve the ease of communication and degree of social connection 40 . This can be observed in "chameleon" effects, in which individuals mutually adapt to each other's behavior during an interaction [41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51] . Greater degrees of behavioral similarity (e.g., smiling, face touching, and leg shaking) between individuals tends to yield smoother and more enjoyable interactions 41,44 although these findings may not be consistent across contexts 52,53 .…”

The three second time window in poems and language processing in general: Complementarity of discrete timing and temporal continuity

“…The basic idea of a social co‐adaptation is that humans synchronize to each other during numerous social interactions, adjusting individual temporal windows to a common length (here, of ~3 s). Such synchronization in social interactions might involve synchronization on both behavioral and physiological levels (e.g., Dikker et al, 2017; Hale, Ward, Buccheri, Oliver, & Hamilton, 2020). The neural and functional relationship between speech production and perception is not a new topic; it has been discussed with respect to the perception–production functions of Wernicke's area (Binder, 2015) and the motor theory of speech perception (Liberman & Mattingly, 1985).…”