Can Humans Learn How to Minimize Unintended Interpersonal Coordination?

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Can Humans Learn How to Minimize Unintended
Interpersonal Coordination?
L. MARIN1, J. ISSARTEL1.2 M. CADOPI1

• 1. Motor Efficiency and Deficiency Laboratory,
  University Montpellier 1, Montpellier, France
• 2. Sonic Arts Research Center, Queens
  University, Belfast, Northern Ireland

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Characteristics of interpersonal coordination
between humans
Hands clapping
Ex applause tends to be in-phase (Neda 2000).
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Intentional interpersonal coordination
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Unintended interpersonal coordination
However, in our day-to-day lives, interpersonal
coordination is mostly unintentional
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Unintended interpersonal coordination Experimenta
l evidence 1 (Schmidt OBrien, 1997)
Instructions to participants
Swing a pendulum at their preferred frequency
2 conditions - with - without
the other participants moves in sight
Results with the other participants movements
in sight
in phase and anti-phase coordination emerge
Consequently Participants coordinate together
even if coordination is not the goal of the
situation (or the instructions)
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Unintended interpersonal coordination Experiment
al evidence 2 (Issartel, Marin Cadopi, 2007)
In a recent experiment authors explicitly asked
participants to not coordinate their movements
with the other participant?
Instructions to participants
move their arms however they want
2 conditions - alone - with someone
to move as if they were alone
Results
When alone low correlation between participants
0.37
When front of someone correlation 0.66
Consequently Unintentional synchrony emerges
even when instructions explicitly specify to not
synchronize with the other participant
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Unintended Interpersonal Coordination Conclusion
The emergent phenomenon of coordination is so
powerful that humans cannot avoid an unintended
dyadic motor coordination
This consequence is an illustration of the
spontaneous process that underlies human
interpersonal coordination
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Unintended Interpersonal Coordination Goal of
this study
But are humans able to change their natural
process ? Can we learn how to minimize the
unintended phenomenon of interpersonal
coordination ?
In this study we are interested in investigating
Whether humans CAN adapt new ways of dealing
with this spontaneous process.
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Unintended Interpersonal Coordination Hypothesis
We hypothesize that expert dancers can be a
representative example of humans that are able to
adapt new ways of dealing with this spontaneous
process.
We predict that expert contemporary dancers are
able to not coordinate with someone if we ask
them to do so
because they are used to acting without taking
into account the moves of other dancers.
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Method Participants and task

• 12 pairs of participants
• 6 pairs of expert dancers
• 6 pairs of non dancers

- Right elbows were put on the table
Task

• to freely move their right forearm in the
  vertical plane
• No instructions about frequency or amplitude

Led to an improvisational situation
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Interpersonal coordination and dance improvisation
Expert contemporary dancers are often involved in
an improvisational dance situation
An improvisational dance task is a very rich
situation from a dynamical point of view

• Movements are not planned

- Movements are made from moment to moment
- Improvisation is made straight away
Emergence of movements
An improvisational task reveals dancers
individual properties (motor signature) which are
manifested as preferred frequencies
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Method 2 experimental conditions

• Condition Alone Each participant moved his/her
  arm alone (control condition)

• Condition Paired participants sat front each
  other. They were instructed to not take into
  account the movements of the other participant

6 trials in each condition
Analyses were performed on the angle between the
forearm and the arm
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Method Wavelet and Cross-wavelet transform Method
The wavelet transform (WT)
Precisely estimates the frequencies of the
participants movements throughout the time
(Issartel et al., 2006)
The Cross-Wavelet Transform (CWT)
Interaction between two signals
Precisely estimates the common frequencies
between participants movements throughout the
time (Issartel et al., 2006)
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Method Data analysis and variables
Before analyzing interpersonal interaction
1) Motor signature analysis
Motor Signature
Individual properties
Wavelet Analysis
Comparison inter trial and inter condition
(reproducibility)
- Number of frequency occurrences
- Distribution of the WT spectrum
indicates frequencies distribution of the entire
spectrum
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Method Data analysis and variables
2) Interpersonal interaction analysis
Common frequencies between two signals
Cross-wavelet Analysis
Comparison inter group
- Distribution of the Cross-WT spectrum
Compares frequencies distribution between 2
participants
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Results Visual analysis of the motor signature
Each participant maintains the same frequency
range
Illustration of an individual motor signature
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Results Quantitative analysis of the motor
signature
Comparison inter trial for each participant
Similar number of frequencies
Similar distribution of frequencies
Motor Signature for each participant
Comparison inter condition for each participant
Similar number of frequencies
Similar distribution of frequencies
Motor Signature for each participant
Even if participants can freely move without
frequency and amplitude constraints, dancers and
non-dancers movements are limited to a
preferential range of frequencies
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Results Comparison of interpersonal interaction
Comparison inter group
Non-dancers

• In Alone condition low (virtual) correlation of
  common frequencies within pairs of participants,
  R2 0.37

• In Paired condition correlation of common
  frequencies within pairs of participants, R2
  0.66

Dancers
No statistical differences between Alone and
Paired condition
Contrary to non-dancers, there is no emergence of
unintentional interaction for expert dancers
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Discussion
Interacting with someone does not change the
individual motor signature
There is a strong hold of the motor signature
The most significant finding is that dancers can
intentionally not be coordinated with the other
dancer whereas the non-dancers cannot
During long hours of rehearsal expert dancers
have learned to perform their own specific
choreography without taking into account the
environment around them (i.e., other dancers)
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Conclusion
Even if all humans seem to use the same processes
to synchronize (Schmidt OBrien, 1997)
The example of expert dancers shows that they did
not follow the same processes as non-expert
dancers - they found new ways of dealing with
this synchronization
thus demonstrating that people can learn how to
change the way they typically synchronize with
someone.
This is an illustration of the wonderful capacity
humans have for adaptation. This level of
sophistication and complexity is unique to the
human species, and we have yet to see these kinds
of developments in robots or machines.
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Thank you For your attention