title: Movement coordination during conversation.
abstract: Behavioral coordination and synchrony contribute to a common biological mechanism that maintains communication, cooperation and bonding within many social species, such as primates and birds. Similarly, human language and social systems may also be attuned to coordination to facilitate communication and the formation of relationships. Gross similarities in movement patterns and convergence in the acoustic properties of speech have already been demonstrated between interacting individuals. In the present studies, we investigated how coordinated movements contribute to observers' perception of affiliation (friends vs. strangers) between two conversing individuals. We used novel computational methods to quantify motor coordination and demonstrated that individuals familiar with each other coordinated their movements more frequently. Observers used coordination to judge affiliation between conversing pairs but only when the perceptual stimuli were restricted to head and face regions. These results suggest that observed movement coordination in humans might contribute to perceptual decisions based on availability of information to perceivers.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Nida
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Latif
authors.affiliation: Department of Electronics, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil.
authors.forename: Adriano V
authors.initials: AV
authors.lastname: Barbosa
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Vatikiotis-Bateson
authors.affiliation: Department of Linguistics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Vatiokiotis-Bateson
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Monica S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Castelhano
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada; Department of Otolaryngology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: K G
authors.initials: KG
authors.lastname: Munhall
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D033062:Friends; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D007697:Kinesics; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D009068:Movement; D010465:Perception; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D013060:Speech; D055815:Young Adult