Coordination Matters: Interpersonal Synchrony Influences Collaborative Problem-Solving

Abstract

Moving in time with others is a central characteristic of social life and has been shown to promote a host of social-cognitive attunements (e.g., person memory, affiliation, prosociality) for those involved. Less attention has been paid, however, to how the effects of coordination can serve higher-order goal-directed social behaviour. Here we explored whether interpersonal synchrony impacts performance on a collaborative problem-solving task. One hundred and ninety two participants completed a short movement exercise in pairs whereby coordination mode was manipulated (in-phase synchrony, asynchrony, control). Each pair then jointly discussed a problem-solving exercise while the degree to which coordination spontaneously emerged was assessed. The results revealed that collaboration was more effective following in-phase coordination. Of theoretical significance, both instructed and spontaneous synchrony were associated with better performance, with the short-term history of each dyad shaping precisely when coordination was functional. Overall, the synchronization of body movements appears to support effective collaboration.

Interpersonal Coordination Dynamics in Psychotherapy: A Systematic Review

“…Advancing the empirical work in this area will have practical implications for theory building as well. On the one hand, these studies show that coordination matters in psychotherapy, but studies in other contexts are beginning to show that more coordination is not necessarily better and may be largely contingent upon context (Abney et al 2015;Miles et al 2017;Timmons et al 2015). It may be that better therapeutic outcomes are achieved with an optimum amount of coordination (cf.…”

Gender differences in synchrony: Females in sync during unstructured dyadic conversation

“…In dealing with the time-frequency tradeoff, the wavelet approach shows superiority over short-time windowed techniques because of its multiscale properties. Furthermore, relative phase information, the pattern of synchrony, can also be obtained via the wavelet transform method (Miles, Lumsden, Flannigan, Allsop, & Marie, 2017). By employing this approach, time-series movement data can be plotted on a time-frequency plane ( Figure 1) in which the frequency components are illustrated on the y-axis and the timeline is represented by the x-axis.…”

“…As for the Fourier transform, a cross-spectrum analysis can be conducted by using the wavelet transform in which the cross-wavelet coherence (WTC) represents the similarity between the two time-series at each component frequency or the degree of synchrony, which is illustrated as the gray value. Furthermore, relative phase information, the pattern of synchrony, can also be obtained via the wavelet transform method (Miles, Lumsden, Flannigan, Allsop, & Marie, 2017). Previous studies on structured/unstructured conversations have employed this approach to assess synchrony (Fujiwara & Daibo, 2016;Schmidt et al, 2014).…”

Reduced nonverbal interpersonal synchrony in autism spectrum disorder independent of partner diagnosis: a motion energy study

“…It can include a broad range of nonverbal behaviours and ranges from simultaneous occurrence of behaviours to behaviours involving a short delay [17,18]. IPS may underlie interaction success because it can promote effective turn-taking, as well as connectedness, trust and prosocial behaviour [11,19], and it can even predict the success of a problem-solving exercise, negotiation or meeting [20,21]. It has also been associated with various psychopathological conditions like schizophrenia [22,23], social anxiety disorder [24] and borderline personality disorder [25].…”