Dynamics of Social Cognition

Dynamics of Social CognitionDrew Abney and Christopher KelloCognitive and Information Sciences

Social CognitionSocial interaction and communication lie at the core of human intelligence

Social CoordinationSocial interaction and communication are fundamentally functions of coordination

Dynamical BasesWhat are the dynamical bases of coordination that support social cognition?

Alignment / Convergence / Priming / SynchBehavioral vs. Distributional MatchingInteractive Alignment ModelComplexity Matching TheoryComplexity Matching ExperimentLexical AlignmentBrennan and Clark (1996)Director: a docksiderMatcher: a what?Director: umMatcher: is that a kind of dog?Director: no, it's a kind of um leather shoe, kinda preppy penny loaferMatcher: okay, okay, got it

Thereafter, the director referred to this object as the penny loafer.

Director: another fish, the most realistic looking one with the pink stripes, green & pinkMatcher: a rainbow trout?Director: yeah, yeah

From then on, the director referred to the fish as the rainbow trout.Phonetic ConvergencePardo (2006)

Syntactic PrimingPickering and Branigan (1999)

SynchronizationRichardson and Dale (2005)

Behavioral MatchingAll of these phenomena may be expressed as behavioral matchingParticular acts of behavior are (nearly) matched one-for-one

Distributional MatchingThese phenomena also may be expressed as distributional matchingThe probability distributions over kinds of behaviors are matched, not each instance

Person AP(S) Sa Sb Sc Sd Se

Person B Sa Sb Sc Sd SeDistributional MatchingThese phenomena also may be expressed as distributional matchingThe probability distributions over kinds of behaviors are matched, not each instance

Person APerson BTheoretical FrameworkInteractiveAlignment(Garrod & Pickering,2004)

Interactive Alignment ModelMatching processes serve to: Align levels of representationEstablish common groundCouple dynamics across scales

What kind of dynamics should we expect from human language, cognition, and behavior?

Power Law DynamicsFluctuations and distributions of behavioral measurements often follow power laws Probability of observing a measured quantity is a power law function of the quantity itself

Why?Power laws occur when processes are nested across scales of measurementphonsyllphonphonwordsyllphonphonphonsyllphonphonphonWhy?Power laws occur when processes are nested across scales of measurementphonsyllphonphonwordsyllphonphonphonsyllphonphonphonphonsyllphonphonwordsyllphonphonphonsyllphonphonphonphonsyllphonphonwordsyllphonphonphonsyllphonphonphonphraseComplex SystemsComplex systems consist of nested processes, coupled across scales

Coupling across scales is achieved when dynamics are near critical points (Stanley, 1987)

Complex Systems

Bertschinger &Natschlger (2004)Coupled Complex SystemsWhat happens when two complex systems are coupled via bi-directional interactions?

Coupled Complex Systems

CoupledDynamicsComplexity MatchingA formal prediction using fractional methods recently developed in statistical mechanics by West, Geneston, and Grigolini (2008):Coupled complex systems should exhibit matching exponents in their power law dynamics

Person Alog xlog P(x)Person Blog xlog P(x)Complexity MatchingComplexity Matching ExperimentSocial interaction should yield complexity matching, but how can we measure it?Need to express behavior as a point process

We analyzed speech signals from a dyadic interaction experiment by Paxton & Dale (2013)

Dyadic InteractionsPairs of individuals discussed hot button issuesSame-sex marriageProgressive taxationAbortion

Based on prior questionnaires, each dyad discussed one issue they agreed on, and one issue they disagreed onAffiliative versus Debate conditions

Dyadic Interactions

Speech AnalysisAcoustic waveforms for each individual were processed as event seriesEvents were onsets and offsets of acoustic energy

Relation to Language StructureEvents can be analyzed on different timescales, corresponding to nested language structure

phonesyllableword/phrasesentencediscourse

Inter-Event Interval Distributions = 2

IEIIEIIEIIEIAllan Factor AnalysisWell-suited for dynamics of point processes

Allan Factor Analysis debate > affiliative data > surrogate debate > affiliative

Complexity Matching AnalysisD affiliative < D debateD data < D surrogateConclusionsSpeech readily exhibits power law dynamicsNot a byproduct of acoustic analysisSpeech dynamics exhibit complexity matchingExtension of behavioral matchingDriven by complex systems theory from statistical mechanicsComplexity matching is a dynamical basis of social cognitionPredicted to maximize information transmission

AcknowledgmentsJamie Faria, Adrian Barr

DrewAbneyRickDaleAlexandraPaxton