title: Interpersonal similarity between body movements in face-to-face communication in daily life.
abstract: Individuals are embedded in social networks in which they communicate with others in their daily lives. Because smooth face-to-face communication is the key to maintaining these networks, measuring the smoothness of such communication is an important issue. One indicator of smoothness is the similarity of the body movements of the two individuals concerned. A typical example noted in experimental environments is the interpersonal synchronization of body movements such as nods and gestures during smooth face-to-face communication. It should therefore be possible to estimate quantitatively the smoothness of face-to-face communication in social networks through measurement of the synchronization of body movements. However, this is difficult because social networks, which differ from disciplined experimental environments, are open environments for the face-to-face communication between two individuals. In such open environments, their body movements become complicated by various external factors and may follow unstable and nonuniform patterns. Nevertheless, we consider there to be some interaction during face-to-face communication that leads to the interpersonal synchronization of body movements, which can be seen through the interpersonal similarity of body movements. The present study aims to clarify such interaction in terms of body movements during daily face-to-face communication in real organizations of more than 100 people. We analyzed data on the frequency of body movement for each individual during face-to-face communication, as measured by a wearable sensor, and evaluated the degree of interpersonal similarity of body movements between two individuals as their frequency difference. Furthermore, we generated uncorrelated data by resampling the data gathered and compared these two data sets statistically to distinguish the effects of actual face-to-face communication from those of the activities accompanying the communication. Our results confirm an interpersonal similarity of body movements between two individuals in face-to-face communication, for all the organizations studied, and suggest that some body interaction is behind this similarity.
authors.affiliation: Department of Computational Intelligence and Systems Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan.
authors.forename: Naoki
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Higo
authors.affiliation: Department of Computational Intelligence and Systems Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan.
authors.forename: Ken-ichiro
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ogawa
authors.affiliation: Department of Computational Intelligence and Systems Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan.
authors.forename: Juichi
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Minemura
authors.affiliation: Department of Computational Intelligence and Systems Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan.
authors.forename: Bujie
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan.
authors.forename: Takayuki
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Nozawa
authors.affiliation: Reseach into Artifacts, Center for Engineering, the University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Japan.
authors.forename: Taiki
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ogata
authors.affiliation: Center Research Laboratory, Hitachi Ltd., Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Koji
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ara
authors.affiliation: Center Research Laboratory, Hitachi Ltd., Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Kazuo
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Yano
authors.affiliation: Department of Computational Intelligence and Systems Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan.
authors.forename: Yoshihiro
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Miyake
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D005868:Gestures; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D007697:Kinesics; D008297:Male; D015233:Models, Statistical; D009068:Movement / Q000502:physiology*; D011187:Posture / Q000502:physiology*; D012944:Social Support