The rhythm that unites: an empirical investigation into synchrony, ritual, and hierarchy

Synchrony, or rhythmic bodily unison activities such as drumming or cadence marching, has attracted growing scholarly interest. Among laboratory subjects, synchrony elicits prosocial responses, including altruism and empathy. In light of such findings, researchers in social psychology and the bio-cultural study of religion have suggested that synchrony played a role in humanity’s evolutionary history by engendering collectivistic commitments and social cohesion. These models propose that synchrony enhances cohesion by making people feel united. However, such models overlook the importance of differentiated social relations, such as hierarchies. This dissertation builds on this insight by drawing on neuroscience, coordination dynamics, social psychology, anthropology, and ritual studies to generate a complex model of synchrony, ritual, and social hierarchy, which is then tested in an experimental study. In the hypothesized model, shared motor unison suppresses the brain’s ability to distinguish cognitively between self-caused and exogenous motor acts, resulting in subjective self-other overlap. During synchrony each participant is dynamically entrained to a group mean rhythm; this “immanent authority” prevents any one participant from unilaterally dictating the rhythm, flattening relative hierarchy. As a ritualized behavior, synchrony therefore paradigmatically evokes shared ideals of equality and unity. However, when lab participants were assigned to either a synchrony or asynchrony manipulation and given a collaborative task requiring complex coordination, synchrony predicted a marginally lower degree of collaboration and significantly lower interpersonal satisfaction. These findings imply that unity and equality can undercut group cohesion if the collective agenda is a shared goal that requires interpersonal coordination. My results emphasize that, despite the inevitable tensions associated with social hierarchy, complementary roles and hierarchy are vital for certain aspects of social cohesion. Ritual and convention institute social boundaries that can be adroitly negotiated, even as egalitarian effervescence such as communitas (in the sense of Victor Turner) facilitates social unity and inspires affective commitments. These findings corroborate theories in ritual studies and sociology that caution both against excessive emphasis on inner emotive states (such as empathy) and against excessively rigid conventions or roles. An organic balance between unity and functional differentiation is vital for genuinely robust, long-term social cohesion.2018-06-21T00:00:00

Dance/Movement Therapy and Autism: A Case Study

This thesis explores the development of the therapeutic relationship with a child with autism through dance/movement therapy. The characteristics of Autism Spectrum Disorder effect social interactions, communication, behavior and interests. This means there is difficulty engaging and maintaining reciprocal social interactions, and trouble with receptive and expressive language. The purpose of this study is to describe how movement mirroring in dance/movement therapy affects the development of the therapeutic relationship with a child with autism, through the analysis of the Ways of Seeing approach. The data collected in this clinical case study consisted of video tapped sessions and Laban Movement Analysis transcriptions of the sessions. The child participated in five dance/movement therapy sessions over five consecutive days. A relationship was created that produced growth for both the child and the dance/movement therapy researcher. This development was described through The Ways of Seeing Technique and Method. The findings are told through a narrative of the sessions through the eyes of the researcher

Modulating Effects of Time of Day on Age Differences in Memory Performance: Attention Versus Inhibition

Research suggests that some cognitive processes follow a circadian rhythm, and the peak performance periods correlate with individual patterns of physiological arousal. Recent findings in the literature suggest that the optimal time synchrony may modulate the magnitude of age differences in cognitive performance across time of day. The first goal of the present study was to further investigate the so-called “synchrony effects” in younger and older adults. The second purpose was to offer and examine an alternative explanation for the “synchrony effect” phenomenon related to deficits in attentional resources rather than inefficient inhibition. And the third purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between age and time of day in cognitive functioning in a different context; namely, in conditions of divided attention. Participants were 48 UND students and 45 elderly adults from the Greater Grand Forks community. They were tested individually on a prose recall task and a “garden-path” task that is a procedure to assess inhibitory control over no-longer-relevant material. The latter task was administered in a dual-task condition. A series of mixed analyses of variance with two between-subject factors (Age, Time of Day) and two within-subjects factors (Passage Type and Levels of Importance for prose recall; Priming Effects and Tone for the “garden-path”) was performed. Additionally, analyses of covariance were conducted. The present results confirm the well-documented age differences in prose recall, prose reading time, and reaction time to the secondary task in a dual-task procedure. However, in none of the four different mental operations investigated in the present study were the expected “synchrony effects” found. Moreover, in one of the tasks a statistically significant interaction was found, indicating a relationship in the opposite direction. The analysis of the attentional cost of the underlying mental processes in the “garden-path” procedure suggests that the modulating effects of time of day on age-differences may indeed be related to deficits in attentional resources. Discrepancies of the present results with other research findings in this area are discussed. In addition, conclusions, limitations, and recommendations for future research are provided

A review of theories and methods in the science of face-to-face social interaction

For most of human history, face-to-face interactions have been the primary and most fundamental way to build social relationships, and even in the digital era they remain the basis of our closest bonds. These interactions are built on the dynamic integration and coordination of verbal and non-verbal information between multiple people. However, the psychological processes underlying face-to-face interaction remain difficult to study. In this Review, we discuss three ways the multimodal phenomena underlying face-to-face social interaction can be organized to provide a solid basis for theory development. Next, we review three types of theory of social interaction: theories that focus on the social meaning of actions, theories that explain actions in terms of simple behaviour rules and theories that rely on rich cognitive models of the internal states of others. Finally, we address how different methods can be used to distinguish between theories, showcasing new approaches and outlining important directions for future research. Advances in how face-to-face social interaction can be studied, combined with a renewed focus on cognitive theories, could lead to a renaissance in social interaction research and advance scientific understanding of face-to-face interaction and its underlying cognitive foundations

Eye movements in time : auditory influences on oculomotor timing

The dominant models of eye movement timing consider only visual factors as modulators of when gaze orients (e.g. EZ-Reader, SWIFT, CRISP, LATEST). Yet realworld perception is multimodal, and temporal information from audition can both aid the predictive orienting of gaze (to relevant audiovisual onsets in time), and inform visual orientation decisions known to modulate saccade timing, e.g. where to orient. The aim of this thesis was to further the current understanding of eye movement timing to incorporate auditory information; specifically investigating the implicit and explicit capacity for musical beats to influence (and entrain) eye movements, and to quantify the capacity and limitations of direct control when volitionally matching eye movements to auditory onsets. To achieve this, a highly-simplified gaze-contingent visual search paradigm was refined that minimised visual and task factors in order to measure auditory influence. The findings of this thesis present evidence that self-paced eye movements are impervious to implicit auditory influences. The explicit control of eye movements, as small corrections in time to align with similarly timed music, was very limited. In contrast, when visual transitions were externally timed, audiovisual correspondence systematically delayed fixation durations. The thesis also measured the extent of direct control that can be exerted on eye movements, including the role of auditory feedback, as well as modulating visual complexity to further increase inhibition and temporal precision. These studies show a predictive relationship between the level of direct volitional control that an individual can affect and how synchronised they are. Additionally, these studies quantify a large subpopulation of quick eye movements that are impervious to direct control. These findings are discussed as provocation for revised oculomotor models, future work that considers the temporal relationship between shifts of attention and gaze, and implications for wider psychological research that employs timed eye movement measures

Fractals in the Nervous System: conceptual Implications for Theoretical Neuroscience

This essay is presented with two principal objectives in mind: first, to document the prevalence of fractals at all levels of the nervous system, giving credence to the notion of their functional relevance; and second, to draw attention to the as yet still unresolved issues of the detailed relationships among power law scaling, self-similarity, and self-organized criticality. As regards criticality, I will document that it has become a pivotal reference point in Neurodynamics. Furthermore, I will emphasize the not yet fully appreciated significance of allometric control processes. For dynamic fractals, I will assemble reasons for attributing to them the capacity to adapt task execution to contextual changes across a range of scales. The final Section consists of general reflections on the implications of the reviewed data, and identifies what appear to be issues of fundamental importance for future research in the rapidly evolving topic of this review

Structuring social relationships: Music-making and group identity

This thesis is about groups and their boundaries: how we bond with some people, but are separated from others who do not belong. It is also about social interaction - the building-blocks of this group identity. In particular, I investigate music’s role in our social landscape. Making music together is a powerful way of establishing and structuring these relationships; I argue that it can bring people together, but can also reinforce the divisions between them. First, I present a new synthesis, drawing on relevant literature about our capacity for sociality, analyses of social interaction, and a history of the research on social groups. I outline a helpful framework by which to understand different forms of social engagement, depending on the nature of the interaction goal; I also clarify the concepts of interdependence and categorisation as distinct processes in group formation. Following this, I suggest that when our interaction is primarily affiliative, or relational, in goal (with little or no external goal focus), then it brings people together via relationships of interdependence; when we aim to communicate something more precisely (i.e. we have an external goal), then the need to maintain our common ground might instead form the basis for social division via categorisation. Second, I report an initial empirical project which tests some of these predictions. My experiments show that music-making enhances affiliation, especially when there is no external goal focus. Adding a goal contributes to social division - affiliation on the basis of common team membership - but only when the interaction task was a success. When it was not successful, or caused embarrassment for those involved, participants instead seem to distance themselves from any associated group identity. This experimental work is supported by video analyses, in which I show different patterns of behaviour in interaction with and without an external goal. This thesis is an important starting point in understanding the nature both of social groups and of music. It highlights the potential for music-making to structure our social world through either affiliation or division

Neuromagnetic investigations of mechanisms and effects of STN-DBS and medication in Parkinson's disease

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder cardinally marked by motor symptoms, but also sensory symptoms and several other non-motor symptoms. PD patients are typically treated with dopaminergic medication for several years. Many patients eventually experience bouts of periods where medication might not be able to effectively control symptoms as well as experience side-effects of long-term dopaminergic treatments. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an option as the next therapeutic recourse for such patients. DBS treatment essentially involves placement of stimulating electrodes in the subthalamic nucleus (STN) or the globus pallidus internum (GPi) along with an implanted pulse generator (IPG) in the sub-clavicular space. STN-DBS alleviates motor symptoms and leads to substantial improvements in quality of life for PD patients. Although DBS is known to improve several classes of symptoms, the effect mechanism of DBS is still not clear. While there is a lack of electrophysiological investigation of sensory processing and the effects of treatments in PD altogether, the electrophysiological studies of the cortical dynamics during motor tasks and at rest lack consensus.We recorded magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electromyography (EMG) from PD patients in three studies: (i) at rest, (ii) during median nerve stimulation, and (iii) while performing phasic contractions (hand gripping). The three studies focused on cortical oscillatory dynamics at rest, during somatosensory processing and during movement, respectively. The measurements were conducted in DBS-treated, untreated (DBS washout) and dopaminergic-medicated states. While both treatments (DBS and dopaminergic medication) ameliorated motor symptoms similarly in all studies, they showed differentiated effects on: (i) increased sensorimotor cortical low-gamma spectral power (31-45 Hz) (but no changes in beta power (13-30 Hz)) at rest only during DBS, (ii) somatosensory processing with higher gamma augmentation (31-45 Hz, 20-60 ms) in the dopaminergic-medicated state compared to DBS-treated and untreated states, and (iii) hand gripping with increased motor-related beta corticomuscular coherence (CMC, 13-30 Hz) during dopaminergic medication in contrast to increased gamma power (31-45 Hz) during DBS.Firstly, we infer from the three studies that DBS and dopaminergic medication employ partially different anatomo-functional pathways and functional strategies when improving PD symptoms. Secondly, we suggest that treatments act on pathological oscillatory dynamics differently at cortical and sub-cortical levels and may do so through more sophisticated mechanisms than mere suppression of the pathological spectral power in a particular band. And thirdly, we urge exploring effect mechanisms of PD treatments beyond the motor system. The effects of dopaminergic medication on early somatosensory processing has opened the door for exploring the effects of treatments and studying their mechanisms using electrophysiology, especially in higher order sensory deficits. Integration of such research findings into a holistic view on mechanisms of treatments could pave way for better disease management paradigms. 

Testing Matching and Mirroring With Homophily in Onboarding Leadership Socialization

This study was designed to test the relationship between matching and mirroring (MM) and homophilous perceptions (PHM) in leadership socialization. Elevated PHM levels were hypothesized to affect workplace acceptance levels. The need for testing leadership socialization skills was magnified with the current demographic shift known as the leadership succession crisis, creating problems with onboarding strategies. The theoretical foundations of the study were based on the social identity theory, the social presence theory, the leader-member exchange theory, and the similarity-attraction paradigm. The study conducted at Workforce Solutions North Texas in Wichita Falls, Texas was sampled based on the calculated strength of the effect in a pilot study. Test group participants engaged in MM enhanced social conversation with a coached candidate and control group participants conversed with an uncoached participant from the general population engaging in normal conversation. MM processes were differentiated from natural synchronic tendencies using specialized software and Kinect-® sensors. A contrasted group, quasi-experiment was examined with an analysis of covariance. No statistically significant difference was found between groups on PHM levels, correcting for age, gender, ethnicity, height, glasses, hobbies, and professions. However, PHM and coworker acceptance were statistically significant but with no difference between groups. Further research is needed to test PHM as a metric for rapport in socialization strategies. Nevertheless, the homophily lens rather than the rapport lens can help organizational development and human resource professionals quantify and develop more effective socialization strategies aimed at solving problems associated with the leadership succession crisis