Effenberg, Alfred O.

Hwang, Tong-Hun

Polani, Daniel

Schmitz, Gerd

Trendafilov, Dari

English

University of Hertfordshire Research Archive

Interpersonal sensorimotor contingencies: Information-theoretic relevance ofsubjective experienceDari Trendafilov1, Tong-Hun Hwang2, Gerd Schmitz2, Alfred O. Effenberg2, and Daniel Polani11Adaptive Systems Research Group, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK2Institute of Sports Science, Leibniz University, Hannover, Germany{d.trendafilov,d.polani}@herts.ac.uk, effenberg@sportwiss.uni-hannover.deIntroductionInterpersonal synergies are higher-order control systemsformed by coupling movement of two (or more) actors.Many different approaches have been utilised for the charac-terisation of social couplings, such as autocorrelation, cross-correlation (Box and Jenkins (1970)), transfer entropy (Bar-nett et al. (2009)), Granger causality (Granger (1969)), andtheir potential has been demonstrated in many applications.Simultaneous hyper-scanning of several brains have recentlyopened a new field (Babiloni et al. (2006); Astolfi et al.(2010); Schippers et al. (2010); Anders et al. (2011); Dumaset al. (2010)). A key challenge is to design a suitable proce-dure that allows synchrony and turn-taking to spontaneouslytake place. Traditional interactive paradigms mainly consistof non-contingent social stimuli that do not allow true so-cial interaction (Redcay et al. (2010)). Imitation is typicallyused in an interpersonal context with the aim to contributeidentifying neurodynamic signatures of human interactionsand detect, for example, different patterns of synchrony andmovement abnormalities (Grossberg and Seidman (2006)),providing insights about autistic spectrum disorder. A neu-romarker of social coordination (known as phi complex) wasdetected over the right centroparietal area in the 9.2-11.5 Hzrange (Tognoli et al. (2007)). However, apparent interper-sonal coordination could be merely incidental rather thanreflecting true coordination – people may appear to coordi-nate their movements because they simultaneously executesimilar motor programs, mediated by shared motor represen-tations (Garrod and Pickering (2009); Sebanz et al. (2006)).ExperimentOur study explored the emergence of social coupling withina dyad performing a collaborative task on an iPad, dubbed asthe Tetherball game (see Figure1). The Tetherball paradigmwas designed for investigating interpersonal coordinationand implements a two-player dynamic interactive game.With rhythmic tilt movements the players had to acceleratea shackled ball and maintain it moving on a target path. Thevisual feedback consists of a ball, a center anchor, and a tar-get circle, while the controllers are fixed on both sides of theFigure 1: Visualdisplay of theTetherball gameprototype, con-sisting of the ball,the anchor, andthe target.tablet. The ball is connected to the center anchor with aninvisible rubber band, which has elastic force strong enoughto pull the ball to the center anchor when the tablet is flat.Players had to coordinately tilt the tablet using their indexfingers in order to move the ball. The tablet movement isrestricted to 2-DOF and each controller is responsible fortilting along one axis only. The goal is to keep rolling theball on the target circle. Visual feedback was overlaid withdifferent types of auditory effects. The experiment com-prised of one baseline and three control conditions basedon the type of auditory information. Finger movement ofboth players was recorded from inertial sensors embeddedin the tablet at 60Hz. A self-report questionnaire assessedsubjective user experience. The level of coordination wasestimated by applying information-theoretic functionals onthe motion data of both players. Subsequent analysis cor-related these objective measures to self-reported subjectiveuser experience, which included, among others, the follow-ing questions:• Q1: ‘How much did you feel your movement helps thecollaborator’s performance?’• Q2: ‘How much did you feel the collaborator’s movementhelps your performance?’• Q3: ‘How did you experience the collaboration with youpartner?’• Q4: ‘How efficiently did you feel that you managed to dothe task?’DiscussionTo assess the level of coordination between the players weapplied various information-theoretic measures on the x andy axis of the acceleration data representing the finger move-ments of the two players. More precisely, we computed themutual information and the transfer entropy using a contin-uous KSG estimator (Lizier (2014)), and the directed infor-mation using a discrete method (Permuter et al. (2011)). Themeasures were evaluated on three consecutive 15 sec longsections of each trial, discarding the initial 8 sec when theball was not rolling. The maximal value of the three wasselected as representative coefficient for the specific trial.Using the maximal value of the two players provided bythe subjective ratings for Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4 we computedthe correlation between the subjective and the information-theoretic measures over all 15 trials per pair from each groupcombined. The overall results (over all 15 trials) show sig-nificant correlation between the subjective ratings and themutual information for Q1 (ρ = −.32, p = .05), Q3 (ρ =.35, p=.04), and Q4 (ρ = .46, p = .004), the transfer en-tropy for Q3 (ρ = .24, p = .04) and Q4 (ρ = .29, p = .02),and the directed information for Q3 (ρ = .33, p = .05) andQ4 (ρ = .52, p = .001). Different measures provide slightlydifferent levels of correlation, however demonstrate consis-tent trends with each other. The correlation for Q3 and Q4 ispositive, as expected. For Q1 mutual information providednegative correlation, which resonates well with the question,since the better the pair is performing the lower the need forhelp is anticipated.The temporal development of the correlation for mutualinformation and transfer entropy is shown in Figure 2 inwhich the first data point in every chart corresponds to theoverall level (including all 15 trials) and every subsequentvalue is computed by discarding initial trials one by one,and arriving at the final point, which corresponds only to thelast trial. This reveals the evolution of the correlation levelsover time and reflects the influence more recent trials haveon the subjective rating, which is collected only at the veryend. The trajectories reveal steady trends, slightly increasingover time, as expected.2 4 6 8 10 12 14Trial-0.4-0.200.20.40.6Correlation Q1Q2Q3Q42 4 6 8 10 12 14Trial-0.3-0.2-0.100.10.20.30.4CorrelationQ1Q2Q3Q4Figure 2: Temporal development of the correlation betweenthe subjective ratings of Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4 and the esti-mated mutual information (left) and transfer entropy (right).This particular study provides a proof-of-concept examplefor the relevance of the proposed information-theoretic mea-sures for assessing the level of coordination within a dyadand for predicting subjective user experience data. The pa-per demonstrates how task-independent universal measurescould enhance the evaluation of studies and could providetheoretical underpinnings for the characterisation of inter-personal sensorimotor contingencies.AcknowledgementsThe authors would like to acknowledge support by H2020-641321 socSMCs FET Proactive project.ReferencesAnders, S., Heinzle, J., Weiskopf, N., Ethofer, T., and Haynes, J.(2011). Flow of affective information between communicat-ing brains. Neuroimage, 54(1):439–446.Astolfi, L., Toppi, J., Fallani, F. D. V., Vecchiato, G., and Salinari,S. (2010). Neuroelectrical hyperscanning measures simul-taneous brain activity in humans. Brain Topography, pages1–14.Babiloni, F., Cincotti, F., Mattia, D., Mattiocco, M., and Fallani, F.D. V. (2006). Hypermethods for eeg hyperscanning. IEEEEngineering in Medicine and Biology Society Conference,pages 3666–3669.Barnett, L., Barrett, A. B., and Seth, A. K. (2009). 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Interpersonal sensorimotor contingencies: Information-theoretic relevance of subjective experience

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Interpersonal sensorimotor contingencies: Information-theoretic relevance of subjective experience

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