Blog 08: Behavioral Synchrony

This week's readings introduced the concept of behavioral synchrony in HCI. In the paper Interpersonal Synchrony : A Survey Of Evaluation Methods Across Disciplines the authors attempted to clarify the concept of synchrony and its functions in both early infancy and adulthood. The authors initially addressed the fact that synchrony is a difficult concept to define and delimit. However refining the definition from various contexts, authors defined synchrony as something which could occur in all interactive contexts, like cooperative (playing a piece of music in duo) or not cooperative activities (fighting), linguistic (telephone conversations) or not linguistic interaction (catching a ball). Further the authors also argued that synchrony entails interaction.

The study discussed some present non computational methods which have been primarily developed by psychologists to evaluate interactional synchrony and implement study to present the current limitations of computational methods and prospects for synchrony assessment research. The non computational methods included behavioral coding methods, and  coding interactive behavior methods. Further the authors also discussed the non-computational methods for their serious drawbacks which made exploring other methods imperative.

Further the authors reviewed and evaluated advances in computational science for behavior-coding to which are aimed towards modeling synchrony. The authors discussed indicators like head motion tracking, eye movement tracking, biometric data and speech tracking for synchrony analysis. Lastly, the study made implications on how new socially adapted interfaces could emerge from a better analysis of these social mechanisms.

Moving on to the second study of the week which was named Exploring Skin Conductance Synchronization in Everyday Interactions was aimed towards testing the potential of electrodermal activity synchronization to indicate qualities of interpersonal interaction in real-world relationships and contexts. This study explored the potential of EDA synchrony as an indicator of interpersonal aspects, such as engagement and empathy. The study resulted in exploring the potential of electrodermal activity to indicate meaningful social aspects in everyday settings and further  linking it to the mutual emotional engagement of involved persons. The study also outlined the novel opportunities for applications of EDA in HCI.