Vocal Rhythm Coordination and Preterm Infants: Rhythms of Dialogue in a High-Risk NICU Sample

The contemporary bio-psycho-social view of mother-infant relationships holds that early interactions form the foundation of the growing infant’s sense of himself and the world. Prior to the development of linguistically-based communication, nonverbal communication patterns foster the infant’s socio-emotional growth, cognitive capacity and the development of optimal regulatory patterns. Preterm birth significantly alters the typical developmental trajectory on multiple levels and disrupts normal neurobiological and socio-emotional maturational processes, including those that build on early interpersonal experiences with caregivers. The current study of vocal rhythm coordination in preterm mother-infant dyads is the first of its kind. Aspects of infant prematurity (degree of prematurity, infant autonomic maturity, neurobehavioral regulatory capacity) and aspects of maternal influence (including the quality of maternal caregiving and maternal depression and anxiety) were examined in relation to vocal rhythm coordination outcomes at infant age 4 months (CA). Multi-level time-series models were used to generate infant and mother vocal rhythm self-contingency (self-predictability, a form of self-regulation) and vocal rhythm interactive contingency (the degree to which each individual predictably adjusted to the vocal rhythms of the partner). For interactive contingency, results demonstrated that mothers and preterm infants coordinated the duration of pauses and switching pauses (at the turn exchange), indicating that the basic temporal and organizational mechanisms required for interpersonal vocal coordination were in place for this group. Bidirectional coordination was found for mothers’ and infants’ switching pause; unidirectional coordination was present for mothers’ pause. For self-contingency, results demonstrated that both preterm infants and their mothers showed significant self-contingency, indicating that both preterm infants and their mothers were firmly self-rooted, that is, predictable from their own prior behavior. As hypothesized, both infant influences and mother influences contributed to vocal rhythm coordination at 4 months (CA). Infant sex, birthweight, neonatal neurobehavioral regulatory capacity and concurrent vagal tone predicted mother-infant vocal coordination at 4 months (CA). Mothers’ age, ethnicity, and depression and anxiety symptoms at hospital discharge also contributed to vocal coordination at 4 months (CA). Viewed in conjunction with prior vocal rhythm research on term infants, these new findings may be able to aid in the assessment and early intervention of preterm infant dyads that may be at risk for less optimal cognitive and relational outcomes

Impairments of Social Motor Synchrony Evident in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Social interactions typically involve movements of the body that become synchronized over time and both intentional and spontaneous interactional synchrony have been found to be an essential part of successful human interaction. However, our understanding of the importance of temporal dimensions of social motor synchrony in social dysfunction is limited. Here, we used a pendulum coordination paradigm to assess dynamic, process-oriented measures of social motor synchrony in adolescents with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Our data indicate that adolescents with ASD demonstrate less synchronization in both spontaneous and intentional interpersonal coordination. Coupled oscillator modeling suggests that ASD participants assembled a synchronization dynamic with a weaker coupling strength, which corresponds to a lower sensitivity and decreased attention to the movements of the other person, but do not demonstrate evidence of a delay in information transmission. The implication of these findings for isolating an ASD-specific social synchronization deficit that could serve as an objective, bio-behavioral marker is discussed

Social Timing in Preschoolers with Autism Spectrum Disorder (M.Phil)

Social timing plays a concurrent and long-term role in social interactions. Cyclicity (a person's coordination of speech, body movements etc.) and synchrony (the coordination between individuals) are especially important. Synchronous interactions in childhood affect later developments, such as language development and emotion regulation. In ASD, timing and social timing are abnormal, which may adversely affect or even cause impairments. Evidence of interactional synchrony skills in ASD is sparse, therefore I sought to investigate cyclicity and synchrony skills in ASD. Video-recordings of interaction with and without music between children with ASD and a caregiver (N = 14; 2 to 8 years) were analysed using an adaptation of the well-established Monadic Phase coding scheme. Time-series analysis enabled quantification of cyclicity, level of synchrony (coherence) and significant synchrony. Cyclicity was present in most interactions (76-90%). Coherence scores ranged from .08-.39. Synchrony was present in 19% of time-series without and 60% of time-series with music. Music significantly enhanced presence of synchrony (p < .000) and indicated a trend for enhanced cyclicity (p = .058) and coherence (p = .063). No change over time was observed. Therefore, preschoolers with ASD engaged in rhythmic social timing but consistency was low and diminished compared to neurotypical infants. Music enhanced social timing considerably. No change over time was likely due to fluctuations in children's willingness to engage. Findings are limited by the lack of interrater reliability and control group. The aim of the thesis, to contribute to social timing evidence in ASD was achieved. The method successfully quantified social timing parameters, compared data to previous studies and showed that music enhanced social timing performance. Recommendations for further study include replication with a larger group, more time points, and control groups. This method could be applied to other settings to investigate the concurrent effect of music on social timing

Implementing process methods in learning research:targeting emotional responses in collaborative learning

Abstract. Context and aim: While interacting with peers and teachers in a collaborative learning task, students experience socio-emotional challenges and display emotional responses. These responses have two major components: arousal and valence, which influence the learning process and its outcomes. The aim of the study was twofold: first, to explore how group members’ arousal levels vary across different phases of a collaborative learning task; and second, to investigate how case students’ emotional responses are distributed in the arousal-valence space across the phases of the collaborative task. Methods: Twelve 6th graders from a school of Finland participated in a collaborative task, in groups of three students. The task was to build an energy efficient house in three distinct phases: brainstorming, planning, and building. While performing the activity, students wore Empatica E4 wristbands to measure their electrodermal activity (EDA) and were video-recorded with 360° cameras. Arousal levels were calculated in peaks per min (ppm) and classified as low, middle, and high. Emotional valence was classified from video analysis into positive, neutral, and negative. Results: The ranges for arousal levels were established between 26 and 88 ppm. Only two students displayed the same arousal level across the three phases of the experiment. Three students displayed higher arousal at first and then fell in to lower levels. Four students had the opposite experience and three students did not display a pattern. As for the case students, the student leading a poorly collaborating group experienced oscillating levels of arousal, from middle to high, and displayed a mix of negative and positive valence most of the time. The student loafing around experienced all arousal levels and positive valence most of the time. Overall conclusions and relevance: The study allowed to establish measurement thresholds for arousal as a starting point for future studies in collaborative learning and the arousal-valence space provided a quantifiable picture to help teachers understand the importance of emotional responses in classroom during collaborative learning

Bridging the gap between emotion and joint action

Our daily human life is filled with a myriad of joint action moments, be it children playing, adults working together (i.e., team sports), or strangers navigating through a crowd. Joint action brings individuals (and embodiment of their emotions) together, in space and in time. Yet little is known about how individual emotions propagate through embodied presence in a group, and how joint action changes individual emotion. In fact, the multi-agent component is largely missing from neuroscience-based approaches to emotion, and reversely joint action research has not found a way yet to include emotion as one of the key parameters to model socio-motor interaction. In this review, we first identify the gap and then stockpile evidence showing strong entanglement between emotion and acting together from various branches of sciences. We propose an integrative approach to bridge the gap, highlight five research avenues to do so in behavioral neuroscience and digital sciences, and address some of the key challenges in the area faced by modern societies

Complexity Science in Human Change

This reprint encompasses fourteen contributions that offer avenues towards a better understanding of complex systems in human behavior. The phenomena studied here are generally pattern formation processes that originate in social interaction and psychotherapy. Several accounts are also given of the coordination in body movements and in physiological, neuronal and linguistic processes. A common denominator of such pattern formation is that complexity and entropy of the respective systems become reduced spontaneously, which is the hallmark of self-organization. The various methodological approaches of how to model such processes are presented in some detail. Results from the various methods are systematically compared and discussed. Among these approaches are algorithms for the quantification of synchrony by cross-correlational statistics, surrogate control procedures, recurrence mapping and network models.This volume offers an informative and sophisticated resource for scholars of human change, and as well for students at advanced levels, from graduate to post-doctoral. The reprint is multidisciplinary in nature, binding together the fields of medicine, psychology, physics, and neuroscience

Interactional Synchrony in Romantic Couples: Linking Dynamic Systems of Nonverbal Behavior with Outcome Data

Abstract The aim of this study was to bridge the growing body of research on interactional synchrony with variables reflecting relationship quality in romantic couples. Video data from 116 romantic couples who participated in a short-term relationship intervention (Gordon et al., 2019) and their self-report assessments of relationship satisfaction, emotional intimacy, and constructive communication patterns were used for analyses. Movement was objectively quantified for each partner using Motion Energy Analysis (MEA; Ramseyer & Tschacher, 2011), an automated frame-differencing method. Cross-lag correlations of the time-series data were then aggregated and operationalized as interactional synchrony. Empirical relationships between interactional synchrony and relationship quality variables were then examined. Results demonstrated that interactional synchrony positively predicted relationship satisfaction at baseline, 1-month and 6-months post-intervention. Interactional synchrony predicted emotional intimacy at baseline and 1-month post intervention, but only predicted and constructive communication at baseline but not at 1-month post intervention. The presence of interactional synchrony was not stronger in affiliative conversations (discussion of courtship story and relationship strengths) relative to contentious conversations (relationship concerns). Interactional synchrony did not predict increases in the aforementioned relationship quality variables at any of the timepoints, baseline and 1-month for emotional intimacy and Overall, results suggest that interactional synchrony is linked with indicators of relationship quality in romantic couples, does not vary based on conversational content, and does not predict changes in satisfaction, emotional intimacy, and constructive communication in a short-term intervention

Texting and the brain: The time-course of social brain activation in face-to-face versus text-based computer-mediated-communication

Through evolution, humans have adapted their interactions to face-to-face communication, supported by a network of neural systems which facilitate the transmission and interpretation of social signals for successful communication. However, emerging methods of mediated communication are rapidly shifting our communication habits. For instance, text messaging has become a dominant mode of communication, surpassing face-to-face interaction in some contexts. This study explored differences in neural activation between face-to-face (FtF) and text-based computer-mediated communication (CMC) during a conversation between two communication partners. Seventeen pairs of participants were recruited and each pair undertook a ten-minute conversation in each communication condition. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy was utilized to measure neural activity in two relevant neural structures involved in social cognition: the ventro-medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), and the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC). The results indicated that text-based CMC generated more activity in dmPFC relative to FtF. No overall differences were observed between text-based CMC and FtF conditions in the vmPFC, although a linear trend existed across time showing increasing activation through the conversation in the FtF condition only. The results suggest there are differences in neural activations in key brain regions involved in social cognition and highlight the utility of brain imaging to reveal the way neural systems are engaged in different communication contexts. Understanding these differences in neural activation can provide insight into how the brain processes different communication methods and guide us to build tools that will aid text-based communication to provide more naturalistic experiences

The rhythm of therapy: psychophysiological synchronization in clinical dyads

Rhythmicity and synchronization are fundamental mechanisms employed by countless natural phenomena to communicate. Previous research has found evidence for synchronization in patients and therapists during clinical activity, for instance in their body movements (Ramseyer & Tschacher, 2011) and physiological activations (e.g. Marci et al, 2007; Kleinbub et al., 2012; Messina et al., 2013). While this phenomenon has been found associated with different important aspects of clinical relationship, such as empathy, rapport, and outcome, and many authors suggested that it may describe crucial dimensions of the therapeutic dyad interaction and change, a clear explanation of its meaning is still lacking. The goals of the present work were to: 1) Provide a solid theoretical and epistemological background, in which to inscribe the phenomenon. This was pursued by crossing neurophenomenology’s sophisticated ideas on mind-body integration (Varela, 1996) and Infant Research’s detailed observations on development of infants’ Self through their relationships. The common ground for this connection was the complex systems theory (von Bertalanffy, 1968; Haken, 2006). 2) Contribute to literature through two replications of existing studies (Kleinbub et al., 2012; Messina et al., 2013) on skin conductance (SC) synchronization. In addition to the original designs, secure attachment priming (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007) was introduced to explore if observed SC linkage was susceptible to manipulation, accordingly to the developmental premises defined in the theoretical chapters. Study 1 focused on synchrony between students and psychotherapists in simulated clinical sessions; Study 2 reprised the same methodology with two principal changes: first the clinician’s role was played by psychologists without further clinical trainings, and second, each psychologist was involved in two distinct interviews, in order to assess the impact of individual characteristics on SC synchrony. 3) Provide an ideographical exploration of the psychotherapy processes linked to matched SC activity. In study 3 the highest and lowest synchrony sequences of 6 sessions of psychodynamic psychotherapy were subject of a detailed phenomenological content analysis. These micro-categories were synthetized in more abstract ones, in order to attempt the recognizing of regularities that could shed light on the phenomenon. 4) To explore the pertinence of employing mathematical properties derived from the application of system theory in psychological contexts. In study 4, Shannon’s entropy and order equations (1948) were applied on the transcribed verbal content of 12 depression psychotherapies, to assess both intra-personal and inter-personal (dyad) order in verbal categories. Results from these studies provided further evidence for the existence of a synchronization mechanism in the clinical dyads. Furthermore the various findings were generally supporting the dyad system theoretical model, and its description of regulatory dynamics as a good explanation of the synchronization phenomena. Discrepancies with previous literature highlighted the need for further studies to embrace more methodological sophistication (such as employing lag analysis), and cautiousness in the interpretation of results