How does interactional coordination come about?

Probing situated social cognition

Hanne De Jaegher¹, Rachel Wood^1,2, Ezequiel Di Paolo^1,2

¹Centre for Research in Cognitive Science (COGS) & ²Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics (CCNR), University of Sussex

In a social encounter, there is often a feeling of being connected (or not) with your interaction partner. Connectedness is central to social encounters, whether it is present to a large or small extent.

We conjecture that the experience of “being connected” with someone in an interaction is related to the coordination between the interaction partners. Neither ‘connectedness’ nor coordination have been given much attention in investigations of social cognition so far. In cognitivist approaches to social understanding such as theory of mind theory and simulation theory, connectedness or coordination between the interaction partners was simply not an issue: people in interaction are puzzles for each other to solve, and this can be done exclusively in the head of one of the interaction partners – no coordination is necessary. In embodied approaches, such as Shaun Gallagher’s ‘embodied practice of mind’, the body of social interactors plays a crucial role. This is good, though Gallagher presupposes connectedness or coordination between interaction partners (it is “always already there”). Here, interactors are pre-coordinated. We suggest that, in order to account for the experience of interpersonal connection, we need to investigate how coordination comes about as part of the interaction process. By ‘interaction process’, we mean the enaction of a social interaction by persons (who are minds embodied, minded bodies).

How can the experience of interpersonal connection be investigated scientifically? First of all, it is, as suggested by Gallagher, a thoroughly embodied affair, hence investigating the embodiment of social interactions is a good starting point. One important aspect of this should be the coordination between interacting persons. Why this is important can be readily illustrated with examples from studies on the effectiness of video-conferencing technology for instance. It can also be probed more directly however. One approach to the question of how coordination between interactors may be established is illustrated by evolutionary robotics work on social interaction. Here, coordination is a direct result of the embodied interaction between agents over time. In these simple simulation models pairs of agents are required to locate and track each other using acoustic signals in an unbounded 2-D environment. Agents are able to produce and perceive sound and, having no other way to track each other, are required to use acoustic signals to perform the task. Successful agent pairs acquire a coordinated pattern of signalling in which individuals take turns in emitting sound so that each may hear the other’s production. During interaction agents maintain proximity with coordinated patterns of rhythmic movement. These behaviours may be understood as maximally exploiting specific aspects of the embodiment of agents in order to perform the auditory localisation task. Their sound and movement coordination patterns are achieved during the interaction through a process of co-adaptation.

Despite their apparent simplicity, these models demonstrate an unexpected degree of behavioural complexity and richness. On this view, such models can provide the means by which we may take first steps in exploring the foundations of social interaction and specifically the genesis of inter-agent coordination. Studying the dynamical underpinnings of coordination in simple models can, in conjunction with embodied approaches mentioned above, lead to a better understanding of the experience of ‘connectedness’.