Children’s perception of interpersonal coordination during joint painting

Abstract

Interpersonal coordination is important for many joint activities. A special case of interpersonal coordination is synchronization, which is required for the performance of many activities, but is also associated with diverse positive social and emotional attributes. The extent to which these effects are due to the reliance on synchrony for task performance or to its specific rhythmic characteristics, is not clear. To address these questions, we considered a more general form of interpersonal coordination, implemented during joint artmaking. This is a non-typical context for interpersonal coordination, not required for task success, and smoother and more loosely-structured than more standard forms of synchronous coordination. Therefore, comparing interpersonal coordination with non-coordination during shared painting, could help reveal general social-emotional reactions to coordination. To gain a more ‘naïve’ perspective we focused on children, and staged coordinated and non-coordinated art interactions between an adult and a child, asking child observers to judge various variables reflecting the perceived bond between the painters. We found an overall stronger perceived bond for the coordination condition. These results demonstrate that even a non-typical form of interpersonal coordination could be attributed with positive social and emotional qualities, a capacity revealed already in childhood, with possible implications for development.

Beyond Simultaneity: Temporal Interdependence of Behaviour is Key to Affiliative Effects of Interpersonal Synchrony in Children

“…Our finding that children perceive synchronized partners as higher in affiliation than asynchronous partners is consistent with previous research into the influence of witnessed IS on children's social judgements (Abraham et al, 2022;Cirelli et al, 2018;Fawcett & Tunçgenç, 2017). In previous studies, participants visually observed the target interactions and the context in which they took place.…”

“…In previous studies, participants visually observed the target interactions and the context in which they took place. For example, one previous study involved teddy bears moving either synchronously or asynchronously and 'talking' with each other (Fawcett & Tunçgenç, 2017), and another involved a child and adult engaged side-by-side in a painting activity using either synchronous or asynchronous movements (Abraham et al, 2022). Ours was a socially 'lean' paradigm in comparison: the brief (11.5s) interactions on which affiliation judgements were based included no visual movement information and minimal social contextual information.…”

“…In addition to scaffolding relations with primary care givers, infants and older children are influenced by IS when evaluating social relationships within their wider social environment (Hoehl et al, 2021;Rauchbauer & Grosbras, 2020). From early on in development, IS acts as a social cue signifying affiliation, with evidence that infants (Fawcett & Tunçgenç, 2017) and children (Abraham et al, 2022) infer greater levels of affiliation between social partners they witness interacting synchronously ("witnessed IS"), compared to those observed acting asynchronously. Relatedly, experiencing IS within an interaction ("experienced IS") precipitates a range of consequences that are important in fostering social relationships.…”