Embodied perspective-taking enhances interpersonal synchronization: A body-swap study

Summary: Humans exhibit a strong tendency to synchronize movements with each other, with visual perspective potentially influencing interpersonal synchronization. By manipulating the visual scenes of participants engaged in a joint finger-tapping task, we examined the effects of 1st person and 2nd p...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Mattia Rosso, Bavo van Kerrebroeck, Pieter-Jan Maes, Marc Leman
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2023-11-01
Series:iScience
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589004223021764
Description
Summary:Summary: Humans exhibit a strong tendency to synchronize movements with each other, with visual perspective potentially influencing interpersonal synchronization. By manipulating the visual scenes of participants engaged in a joint finger-tapping task, we examined the effects of 1st person and 2nd person visual perspectives on their coordination dynamics. We hypothesized that perceiving the partner’s movements from their 1st person perspective would enhance spontaneous interpersonal synchronization, potentially mediated by the embodiment of the partner’s hand. We observed significant differences in attractor dynamics across visual perspectives. Specifically, participants in 1st person coupling were unable to maintain de-coupled trajectories as effectively as in 2nd person coupling. Our findings suggest that visual perspective influences coordination dynamics in dyadic interactions, engaging error-correction mechanisms in individual brains as they integrate the partner’s hand into their body representation. Our results have the potential to inform the development of applications for motor training and rehabilitation.
ISSN:2589-0042