Social Coordination Dynamics: Intertwining Self With Others

在平常的一天里，人们的行为会影响其他人的行为，结果会影响双方。 这样的社会互动是动态的，范围广泛的，通常需要相关各方之间的信息交换。一个简单的例子是两个人修改他们的方法来电梯，以适应对方的通道通过狭窄的空间。更复杂的情况是，教师根据学生自己的行为向学生提供指导，或根据外国军事人员以往的经验培训他们履行某种职能。如何量化和理解这种社会互动？当一个人与另一个人互动时，他的大脑中发生了什么？是什么原则和机制控制着大脑之间的协调？ 该项目的研究人员组成了一个跨学科团队，其专业知识涵盖物理学，认知科学和神经科学。他们使用协调动力学的概念，方法和工具，协调科学，调查社会行为互动的行为和神经基础。基本的实验范式涉及两个人之间或一个人与一个具有类似人类能力的计算机化身之间的运动协调。研究人员让两个人在对方面前做一些简单的动作，然后监测关键的行为和神经变量，以揭示彼此之间的影响程度。通过测试耦合动力系统数学模型的具体预测，研究人员旨在了解社会协调如何随时间演变，并确定一个人对另一个人的影响力。现代技术一直在寻求提高人类的经验和生产力。“他人”的概念已经扩展到不仅包括真实的人类，而且包括网络个人，这一点从机器人和虚拟环境在人类日常事务中发挥的越来越大的作用中可以看出。 在关键的实验中，一个人类受试者与一个虚拟的合作伙伴互动，一个由研究者的耦合动力系统的数学模型驱动的化身，从而允许研究者操纵参数（虚拟合作伙伴的“个性”或“态度”），这些参数在现场互动的研究中通常无法访问。因此，本项目不仅可以揭示普通的社会协调规则，而且还提供了一个原则性的方法，人机交互。此外，该项目将传播有关复杂系统和人类社会行为动态方法的知识。研究人员将对本科生和研究生进行先进方法和分析技术的培训，这些方法和分析技术跨越了行为科学和社会科学，耦合动力系统的物理和数学，以及神经科学和脑成像。目标之一是开发可适用于任何任意社会互动的新测量工具。这种培训旨在培养新一代的跨学科科学家，他们将有能力将大脑，行为和社会功能的研究整合到一个急需的动态框架中。

On an ordinary day, people perform actions that affect other people's behavior resulting in outcomes that affect both. Such social interactions are dynamic, far ranging, and usually require an exchange of information between the parties involved. A simple example is two persons modifying their approach to an elevator to accommodate each other's passage through the narrow space. More complex situations involve a teacher providing guidance to a pupil based on the pupil's own actions or training foreign military personnel to accomplish some function that depends on the latter's previous experiences. How are such social interactions to be quantified and understood? What goes on in a person's brain when they interact with another and what principles and mechanisms govern the coordination between brains? The investigators of this project constitute an interdisciplinary team whose expertise spans physics, cognitive science and neuroscience. They use the concepts, methods and tools of coordination dynamics, the science of coordination, to investigate both the behavioral and neural underpinnings of social behavioral interactions. The basic experimental paradigm involves coordination of movements between two people or between an individual and a computer avatar endowed with human-like capabilities. Pairs of people perform simple actions in front of each other and the investigators monitor key behavioral and neural variables that reveal how strongly each affects the other. By testing specific predictions of a mathematical model of coupled dynamical systems, the investigators aim to understand how social coordination evolves in time and to determine the respective strength of one person's influence on another. Modern technology is always seeking to enhance human experience and productivity. The notion of 'others' has been expanded to include not only real human beings but also cyber-individuals, as evident in the increasing roles played by robotics and virtual environments in everyday human transactions. In crucial experiments, a human subject interacts with a virtual partner, an avatar driven by the investigators' mathematical model of coupled dynamical systems, thereby allowing the investigators to manipulate parameters (the 'personality' or 'attitude' of the virtual partner) that are not normally accessible in studies of live interactions. Thus the present project may not only uncover rules of ordinary social coordination but also offer a principled approach to human-machine interaction. In addition, the project will disseminate knowledge about complex systems and dynamical approaches to human social behavior. The investigators will train undergraduate and graduate students in advanced methods and analysis techniques that cut across the behavioral and social sciences, the physics and mathematics of coupled dynamical systems, and neuroscience and brain imaging. The development of new measuring instruments that may apply to any arbitrary social interaction is a target. Such training aims to bring forth a new generation of interdisciplinary scientist who will be equipped to integrate studies of brain, behavior and social function within a much needed dynamical framework.