Interpersonal Coordination by Nobuyuki Inui

Author:Nobuyuki Inui
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789811317651
Publisher: Springer Singapore

3.1.4 Interpersonal Synergy Involving Intrapersonal Movements

Although Schmidt and O’Brien (1997) and Richardson et al. (2005) examined the interpersonal synchronization of isolated limb movements using wrist-pendulum task, natural interpersonal interactions are whole body interactions that involve intrapersonal subtasks. For example, two people have a conversation while lifting and carrying a table in real life. The interpersonal coordination in their conversation and the interpersonal rhythmic synchrony of their leg movements occur along with other intrapersonally coordinated subtasks, in this case, carrying a table. The organization of these subtasks needs to be coordinated within each person. Interpersonal coordination thus occurs in a context of ongoing intrapersonal coordination (see Chap. 6 as a motor control hierarchy in interpersonal coordination that involves bimanual movement).

In dynamical motor control terminology, interpersonal coordinative structure or synergy that self-organizes across two people in a naturalistic interaction involves speech, bimanual, bipedal and postural intrapersonal synergies that organize the whole body movements of an individual. How do the various intrapersonal synergies interact with or mediate the interpersonal entrainment that emerges in an interaction?

In addition, our environmental interactions involve the active pickup of visual information that requires eye movements. Franz et al. (2001) find the constraints that movements of one effector have on the movements of another. In spite of the work of Gibson (1979), however, because visual systems generally conceived as static, many studies ignore the constraints that eye movements have on the coordination of effector movements that are occurring simultaneously. However, because previous studies find a high degree of intrapersonal coordination between limb and saccade eye movements (e.g., Henriques and Crawford 2002), the eye movements constraint the action you make.

Consequently, Schmidt et al. (2007) examined whether participants would unintentionally entrain to a rhythmically moving stimulus. The left panel of Fig. 3.5 showed environmental entrainment setup to examine the role of eye movements on unintentional entrainment. Participants were instructed to read aloud letters that randomly appeared on a projection screen while simultaneously swing a wrist-pendulum. In addition to the letter stimuli, a sinusoidally oscillating stimulus moved horizontally across the screen. The speed and accuracy of their reading were measured while their wrist movements and the oscillating stimulus were motor and perceptual distracters. The aim of the experiment was to examine whether participants would entrain their wrist movements to the oscillating stimulus and whether visual tracking the stimulus would facilitate this unintentional entrainment. Visual tracking was manipulated by controlling where the letter to be read appeared. When the letters appeared in the center of the screen, the participants were required to fix their gaze directly at the center of the screen (non-tracking condition). When the letters appeared on the visual stimulus, the participants needed to track the stimulus with their eyes as it oscillated from side to side in order to read the letters (tracking condition). To measure chance level coordination, trials were performed in which the letters appeared in the center of the screen along with an invisible oscillating stimulus (control condition). The right panel of Fig. 3.5 showed that the tracking condition produced greater unintentional entrainment than the non-tracking condition.

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