Effects of movement stability and congruency on the emergence of spontaneous interpersonal coordination

Abstract

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 influenced by ("Experiment 1") the stability of the intrapersonal coordination patterns produced by co-actors and ("Experiment 2") the congruency of the intrapersonal coordination patterns produced by co-actors. The stability of intrapersonal movement coordination did not affect 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 affected 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 affect the stability of intrapersonal bimanual coordination. The results suggest that interlimb rhythmic bimanual coordination reflects a single intrapersonal perceptual-motor synergy and that these bimanual synergies (not individual limbs) are what become spontaneously entrained interpersonally.

Intra- and Inter-person Coordinated Movements of Fingers and Toes

“…Previous studies showed that inter-person coordination was stable when spatial relative phase was in-phase compared to anti-phase (Schmidt et al 1990(Schmidt et al , 1998Amazeen et al 1995;Temprado et al 2003;Temprado and Laurent 2004;Richardson et al 2008;Coey et al 2011), which is not in line with the present findings.…”

“…Previous studies on inter-person coordination utilized movements including manipulating a pendulum (Amazeen et al 1995;Schmidt et al 1998;Richardson et al 2008;Coey et al 2011), manipulating a joystick (Temprado et al 2003;Temprado and Laurent 2004), knee flexion/extension (Schmidt et al 1990), and elbow flexion/extension for one subject with shoulder internal/ external rotation for the other (Kilner et al 2003;Fine et al 2013). Visual information derived from these inter-person coordination to form the coordination state was considered to be the spatial relative phase (Temprado et al 2003;Temprado and Laurent 2004;Fine et al 2013), and was thought not to be related to meaningful perceptual-cognitive behavior.…”

Embodiment of intersubjective time: relational dynamics as attractors in the temporal coordination of interpersonal behaviors and experiences

“…This isomorphism suggests again that coordination emerges from the dynamics of interaction rather than from the specific properties of the coordinated components. Such synergistic effects have also been observed in more ecological tasks such as martial arts and hand clapping games (Riley et al, 2011), rocking chairs (Richardson et al, 2007b; Frank and Richardson, 2010), in language games that imply turn-taking (Schmidt et al, 2011) or in problem-solving tasks (Shockley et al, 2003; Richardson et al, 2005; Coey et al, 2011; see also Richardson et al, 2008; Shockley et al, 2009; Fusaroli et al, 2014). During sport activities, whether players are opponents or not, the dynamics of their coupling spontaneously self-organize and attractors emerge from their collective dynamics as well (Bourbousson et al, 2008, 2010a,b; Travassos et al, 2011; Yokoyama and Yamamoto, 2011; Okumura et al, 2012; Duarte et al, 2013; García et al, 2013).…”

Sensorimotor synchronization: A review of recent research (2006–2012)

“…Using a similar paradigm, Coey, Varlet, Schmidt, and Richardson (2011) investigated unintentional interpersonal entrainment when each participant swung two pendulums in phase or in antiphase. Regardless of the participants' intrapersonal coordination mode, intermittent in-phase coordination occurred when the participants' coordination modes were congruent with each other, and to a lesser extent when they were incongruent.…”