The Feeling Is Mutual: Clarity of Haptics-Mediated Social Perception Is Not Associated With the Recognition of the Other, Only With Recognition of Each Other

The enactive theory of perception hypothesizes that perceptual access to objects depends on the mastery of sensorimotor contingencies, that is, on the know-how of the regular ways in which changes in sensations depend on changes in movements. This hypothesis can be extended into the social domain: perception of other minds is constituted by mastery of self-other contingencies, that is, by the know-how of the regular ways in which changes in others’ movements depend on changes in one’s movements. We investigated this proposal using the perceptual crossing paradigm, in which pairs of players are required to locate each other in an invisible one-dimensional virtual space by using a minimal haptic interface.We recorded and analyzed the real-time embodied social interaction of 10 pairs of adult participants. The results reveal a process of implicit perceptual learning: on average, clarity of perceiving the other’s presence increased over trials and then stabilized. However, a clearer perception of the other was not associated with correctness of recognition as such, but with both players correctly recognizing each other. Furthermore, the moments of correct mutual recognition tended to happen within seconds. The fact that changes in social experience can only be explained by the successful performance at the level of the dyad, and that this veridical mutual perception tends toward synchronization, lead us to hypothesize that integration of neural activity across both players played a role

Sensitivity to social contingency in adults with high-functioning autism during computer-mediated embodied interaction

Acknowledgments: We acknowledge financial support from the Dirección General de Asuntos del Personal Académico (DGAPA) grants IA105017, IA104717, IN113013, IN106215 and IV100116, from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and CONACYT grants 221341 and 167441 to Leonardo Zapata-Fonseca and Tom Froese; and the Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship “SOCIAL BRAIN” to Bert Timmermans. We thank Charles Lenay and Dominique Aubert from the Institut Technique de Compiègne for making the TACTOS hardware and software available in Cologne, and providing technical support. Leonardo Zapata-Fonseca would like to specially thank Jorge Campos, Leticia Cruz, Jesús Naveja, Juha Lahnakoski, Tore Erdmann and Lilia Fonseca for interesting discussions, as well as with help for processing of the data.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Multi-scale coordination of distinctive movement patterns during embodied interaction between adults with high-functioning autism and neurotypicals

Funding We acknowledge financial support from DGAPA-PAPIIT projects of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México: IA105017 (RF and LZ-F) and IA104717 (TF), Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACyT) projects 167441 (RF and LZ-F), the scholarship 638215 to LZ-F granted by the CONACyT, the Newton Advanced Fellowship awarded to RF by the Academy of Medical Sciences, through the UK Government’s Newton, and the Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship “SOCIAL BRAIN” awarded to BT. Acknowledgments We thank Charles Lenay and Dominique Aubert from the Université de Technologie de Compiègne for making the TACTOS hardware and software available to the University Hospital Cologne, and for providing technical support. LZ-F would like to specially thank Jesús Naveja and Lilia Fonseca for interesting discussions. SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02760/full#supplementary-materialPeer reviewedPublisher PD

Investigating real-time social interaction in pairs of adolescents with the Perceptual Crossing Experiment

The study of real-time social interaction provides ecologically valid insight into social behavior. The objective of the current research is to experimentally assess real-time social contingency detection in an adolescent population, using a shortened version of the Perceptual Crossing Experiment (PCE). Pairs of 148 adolescents aged between 12 and 19 were instructed to find each other in a virtual environment interspersed with other objects by interacting with each other using tactile feedback only. Across six rounds, participants demonstrated increasing accuracy in social contingency detection, which was associated with increasing subjective experience of the mutual interaction. Subjective experience was highest in rounds when both participants were simultaneously accurate in detecting each other\u27s presence. The six-round version yielded comparable social contingency detection outcome measures to a ten-round version of the task. The shortened six-round version of the PCE has therefore enabled us to extend the previous findings on social contingency detection in adults to an adolescent population, enabling implementation in prospective research designs to assess the development of social contingency detection over time

Estandarización de marcadores moleculares microsatélites para su uso en la industria forestal de misiones, argentina

Título en ingles: Standarization of microsatellite molecular markers for Misiones (Argentina) forest industry Resumen: Provincia de Misiones posee actualmente una actividad forestal en pujante crecimiento ubicándose entre las primeras del país. Este marco de desarrollo productivo permite predecir un ámbito de crecimiento favorecido por las nuevas condiciones del mercado internacional. Por otro lado a pesar del avance de la tecnología industrial, no se ha alcanzado el nivel de desarrollo biotecnológico óptimo que conjugue la calidad genética con características fenotípicas de excelencia en las especies maderables de mayor demanda en la Provincia basándose la selección en criterios netamente fenotípicos y en la experiencia del productor, sin contarse con métodos moleculares desarrollados en la región. Este trabajo presenta los resultados del Proyecto Federal de Innovación Productiva (PFIP Mi09) cuyo objetivo principal fue estandarizar y transferir al sector productivo un conjunto de marcadores moleculares microsatélites para ser aplicado al análisis de poblaciones y forestaciones de Araucaria angustifolia y Pinus taeda provenientes de la Provincia de Misiones (Argentina). Esto permitirá conocer el perfil genético de plantaciones y poblaciones de estas especies forestales, pudiendo aplicarse a la certificación de calidad en la producción forestal o a la selección de ejemplares de especies nativas. Palabras clave: biotecnología; forestaciones; Araucaria angustifolia; Pinus taeda; microsatélites. Abstract: Misiones Province currently has the first intensive forestry activity of Argentine. This framework of productive development allows predict an area of growth favored by the new conditions of the international market. On the other side despite the progress of industrial technology, has not been reached the optimal level of biotechnological development that combining quality with genomic and phenotypic characteristics of forest species. This work presents the results of Federal Project of Productive Innovation (PFIP Mi09) whose main objective was standardize and transfer to the productive sector a set of microsatellites molecular markers to be applied to the populations analysis of Araucaria angustifolia and Pinus taeda forestation from the Misiones (Argentine). This will reveal the plantations and forest genetic profile and may be applied to genetic certification of forest production quality. Key words: technology; forestry; Araucaria angustifolia; Pinus taeda; microsatellit

Time series analysis of embodied interaction: Movement variability and complexity matching as dyadic properties

There is a growing consensus that a fuller understanding of social cognition depends on more systematic studies of real-time social interaction. Such studies require methods that can deal with the complex dynamics taking place at multiple interdependent temporal and spatial scales, spanning sub-personal, personal, and dyadic levels of analysis. We demonstrate the value of adopting an extended multi-scale approach by re-analyzing movement time series generated in a study of embodied dyadic interaction in a minimal virtual reality environment (a perceptual crossing experiment). Reduced movement variability revealed an interdependence between social awareness and social coordination that cannot be accounted for by either subjective or objective factors alone: it picks out interactions in which subjective and objective conditions are convergent (i.e. elevated coordination is perceived as clearly social, and impaired coordination is perceived as socially ambiguous). This finding is consistent with the claim that interpersonal interaction can be partially constitutive of direct social perception. Clustering statistics (Allan Factor) of salient events revealed fractal scaling. Complexity matching defined as the similarity between these scaling laws was significantly more pronounced in pairs of participants as compared to surrogate dyads. This further highlights the multi-scale and distributed character of social interaction and extends previous complexity matching results from dyadic conversation to nonverbal social interaction dynamics. Trials with successful joint interaction were also associated with an increase in local coordination. Consequently, a local coordination pattern emerges on the background of complex dyadic interactions in the PCE task and makes joint successful performance possible

Investigating real-time social interaction in pairs of adolescents with the Perceptual Crossing Experiment

The study of real-time social interaction provides ecologically valid insight into social behavior. The objective of the current research is to experimentally assess real-time social contingency detection in an adolescent population, using a shortened version of the Perceptual Crossing Experiment (PCE). Pairs of 148 adolescents aged between 12 and 19 were instructed to find each other in a virtual environment interspersed with other objects by interacting with each other using tactile feedback only. Across six rounds, participants demonstrated increasing accuracy in social contingency detection, which was associated with increasing subjective experience of the mutual interaction. Subjective experience was highest in rounds when both participants were simultaneously accurate in detecting each other’s presence. The six-round version yielded comparable social contingency detection outcome measures to a ten-round version of the task. The shortened six-round version of the PCE has therefore enabled us to extend the previous findings on social contingency detection in adults to an adolescent population, enabling implementation in prospective research designs to assess the development of social contingency detection over time.status: Published onlin