In:Intersubjectivity in Action: Studies in language and social interaction
Edited by Jan Lindström, Ritva Laury, Anssi Peräkylä and Marja-Leena Sorjonen
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 326] 2021
► pp. 329–346
Movement synchrony as a topic of empirical social interaction research
Published online: 17 November 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.326.15ste
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.326.15ste
Abstract
In this chapter, we consider movement synchrony from two
different perspectives. On the one hand, we report a small-scale
empirical study to test the hypothesis that movement synchrony is a
sequential phenomenon, which serves as a demonstration of how
conversation analytically informed research on participants’
unconscious tendencies to synchronize their body movements could
proceed in practice. On the other hand, we consider movement
synchrony through three closely related, yet essentially different,
conceptual lenses: conditional relevance, dialogic resonance, and
affordance. We suggest that a specific combination of the insights
provided by these three conceptual tools would make conversation
analytically informed study of movement synchrony both possible and
fruitful.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Movement synchrony as a (sequential) contextual phenomenon
- 3.An empirical case: Synchronization of body movement during joint
decision-making
- 3.1Data and method
- 3.1.1Participants
- 3.1.2Measurements
- 3.1.3Procedure
- 3.1.4Data processing
- 3.2Results
- 3.3Discussion of the results
- 3.1Data and method
- 4.How should one account for the interactional functions of movement synchrony?
References
References (85)
Arnold, Lynnette. 2012. “Dialogic
Embodied Action: Using Gesture to Organize Sequence and
Participation in Instructional
Interaction.” Research on
Language and Social
Interaction 45 (3): 269–296.
Bakhtin, Michael M. 1981[1934]. The
Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M.
Bakhtin. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Beebe, Beatrice, Daniel Stern, and Joseph Jaffe. 1979. “The
Kinesic Rhythm of Mother–Infant
Interactions.” In Of
Speech and Time: Temporal Patterns in Interpersonal
Contexts, ed.
by Aron W. Siegman and Stanley Feldstein, 23–34. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Benuš, Štefan. 2014. “Social
Aspects of Entrainment in Spoken
Interaction.” Cognitive
Computation 6 (4): 802–813.
Boersma, Paul, and David Weenink. 2015. “Praat:
Doing Phonetics by
Computer” [Computer
program]. Version 5.4.17, retrieved 3 September 2015
from [URL]
Bucholtz, Mary, and Kira Hall. 2005. “Identity
and Interaction: A Sociocultural Linguistic
Approach.” Discourse
Studies 7 (4/5): 585–614.
Campbell, Donald T. 1958. “Common
Fate, Similarity, and Other Indices of the Status of
Aggregates of Persons as Social
Entities.” Behavioral
Science 3: 14–24.
Chartrand, Tanya L., and John A. Bargh. 1999. “The
Chameleon Effect: The Perception–Behavior Link and Social
Interaction.” Journal of
Personality and Social
Psychology 76 (6): 893–910.
Coates, Jennifer. 1994. “No
Gap, Lots of Overlap: Turn-Taking Patterns in the Talk of
Women
Friends.” In Researching
Language and Literacy in Social
Context, ed.
by David Graddol, Janet Maybin, and Barry Stierer, 177–192. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.
Condon, William S. 1980. “The
Relation of Interactional Synchrony to Cognitive and
Emotional
Processes.” In The
Relation of Verbal and Nonverbal
Behavior, ed.
by Mary R. Key, 49–65. The Hague: Mouton.
Condon, William S., and Louis W. Sander. 1974. “Synchrony
Demonstrated Between Movements of the Neonate and Adult
Speech.” Child
Development 45 (2): 456–462.
Cross, Ian. 2005. “Music
and Meaning, Ambiguity and
Evolution.” In Musical
Communication, ed.
by Dorothy Miell, Raymond MacDonald, and David J. Hargreaves, 27–43. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
De Jaegher, Hanne, Anssi Peräkylä, and Melisa Stevanovic. 2016. “The
Co-Creation of Meaningful Action: Bridging Enaction and
Interactional
Sociology.” Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological
Sciences, 371: 1–10.
Deppermann, Arnulf, and Jürgen Streeck (eds). 2018. Time
in Embodied Interaction: Synchronicity and Sequentiality of
Multimodal
Resources. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Du Bois, John W. 2007. “The
Stance
Triangle.” In Stancetaking
in Discourse: Subjectivity, Evaluation,
Interaction, ed.
by Robert Englebretson, 139–182. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Du Bois, John W., and Elise Kärkkäinen. 2012. “Taking
a Stance on Emotion: Affect, Sequence, and Intersubjectivity
in Dialogic
Interaction.” Text and
Talk 32 (4): 433–451.
Du Bois, John W., R. Peter Hobson, and Jessica A. Hobson. 2014. “Dialogic
Resonance and Intersubjective Engagement in
Autism.” Cognitive
Linguistics 25 (3), 411–441.
Durkheim, Émile. 2001[1912]. The
Elementary Forms of Religious
Life (translated by Carol
Cosman). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Enfield, Nicholas. 2013. Relationship
Thinking: Agency, Enchrony, and Human
Sociality. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Frith, Chris D., and Uta Frith. 2006. “How
We Predict What Other People Are Going to
Do.” Brain
Research 1079: 36–46.
Ford, Cecilia E. and Barbara A. Fox. 2010. “Multiple
Practices for Constructing
Laughables.” In Prosody
in Interaction, ed.
by Dagmar Barth-Weingarten, Elisabeth Reber and Margret Selting, 339–368. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Fusaroli, Riccardo and Kristian Tylén. 2012. “Carving
Language for Social Coordination: A Dynamical
Approach.” Interaction
Studies 13 (1): 103–124.
Giles, Howard, Nikolas Coupland, and Justine Coupland (eds). 1991. Contexts
of Accommodation: Developments in Applied
Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Goodwin, Charles, and Marjorie H. Goodwin. 1987. “Concurrent
Operations on Talk: Notes on the Interactive Organization of
Assessments.” IPRA Papers in
Pragmatics 1: 1–4.
Hamilton, David L., and Steven J. Sherman. 1996. “Perceiving
Persons and
Groups.” Psychological
Review 103: 336–355.
Hari, Riitta, Tommi Himberg, Lauri Nummenmaa, Matti Hämäläinen, and Lauri Parkkonen. 2013. “Synchrony
of Brains and Bodies During Implicit Interpersonal
Interaction.” Trends in
Cognitive
Sciences 17 (3), 105–106.
Heider, Anne, and R. Stephen Warner. 2010. “Bodies
in Sync: Interaction Ritual Theory Applied to Sacred Harp
Singing.” Sociology of
Religion 71 (1): 76–97.
Himberg, Tommi, and Marc R. Thompson. 2011. “Learning
and Synchronising Dance Movements in South African Songs:
Cross-Cultural Motion-Capture
Study.” Dance
Research 29 (2): 303–328.
Himberg, Tommi, Melisa Stevanovic, Maija Niinisalo, Anssi Peräkylä, Mikko Sams, and Riitta Hari. 2017. Gazing
the Partner During Proposals and Their Responses in Dyadic
Decision-Making. Presentation at
the 15th International Pragmatics Conference (IPrA2017) in
Belfast, Northern Ireland, 16–21 July
2017.
Himberg, Tommi, Julien Laroche, Romain Bigé, Megan Buchkowski, Asaf Bachrach. 2018. “Coordinated
Interpersonal Behaviour in Collective Dance Improvisation:
The Aesthetics of Kinaesthetic
Togetherness.” Behavioral
Sciences 8(2), 23.
Hodges, Bert H. 2009. “Ecological
Pragmatics: Values, Dialogical Arrays, Complexity and
Caring.” Pragmatics and
Cognition 17 (3), 628–652.
Houtkoop, Hanneke. 1987. Establishing
Agreement: An Analysis of Proposal-Acceptance
Sequences. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.
Hove, Michael J., and Jane L. Risen. 2009. “It’s
All in The Timing: Interpersonal Synchrony Increases
Affiliation.” Social
Cognition 27 (6): 949–960.
Jefferson, Gail, Harvey Sacks, and Emanuel A. Schegloff. 1987. “Notes
on Laughter in Pursuit of
Intimacy.” In Talk
and Social Organization, ed.
by Graham Button and John R. E. Lee, 152–205. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Jensen, Thomas W. and Sarah Bro Pedersen. 2016. “Affect
and Affordances: The Role of Action and Emotion in Social
Interaction.” Cognitive
Semiotics 9 (1): 79–103.
Keevallik, Leelo. 2010. “Bodily
Quoting in Dance
Correction.” Research on
Language and Social
Interaction 43 (4): 401–426.
Kendon, Adam. 1990. Conducting
Interaction: Patterns of Behavior in Focused
Encounters. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kimbara, Irene. 2006. “On
Gestural
Mimicry.” Gesture 6 (1): 39–61.
LaFrance, Marianne. 1982. “Posture
Mirroring and
Rapport.” In Interaction
Rhythms: Periodicity in Communicative
Behavior, ed.
by Martha Davis, 279–298. New York: Human Sciences Press.
. 1985. “Postural
Mirroring and Intergroup
Orientation.” Personality and
Social Psychology
Bulletin 11: 207–218.
Launay, Jacques, Roger T. Dean, and Freya Bailes. 2012. “Synchronization
Can Influence Trust Following Virtual
Interaction.” Experimental
Psychology 60: 53–63.
Lerner, Gene H. 2002. “Turn-Sharing:
The Choral Co-Production of
Talk-in-Interaction.” In The
Language of Turn and Sequence, ed.
by Cecilia E. Ford, Barbara A. Fox, and Sandra A. Thompson, 225–256. New York: Oxford University Press.
Linell, Per. 2009. Rethinking
Language, Mind, and World Dialogically: Interactional and
Contextual Theories of Human
Sense-Making. Charlotte, NC: Information Age.
Louwerse, Max M., Rick Dale, Ellen G. Bard, and Patrick Jeuniaux. 2012. “Behavior
Matching in Multimodal Communication is
Synchronized.” Cognitive
Science 36 (8): 1404–1426.
Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1946[1923]. “The
Problem of Meaning in Primitive
Languages.” In The
Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language
upon Thought and of the Science of
Symbolism, ed.
by Charles K. Ogden and Ivor A. Richards, 296–336. New York: Harcourt Brace.
Marsh, Kerry L., Michael J. Richardson, and Richard C. Schmidt. 2009. “Social
Connection Through Joint Action and Interpersonal
Coordination.” Topics in
Cognitive
Science 1 (2): 320–339.
Miles, Lynden K., Louise K. Nind, and C. Neil Macrae. 2009. “The
Rhythm of Rapport: Interpersonal Synchrony and Social
Perception.” Journal of
Experimental Social
Psychology 45 (3): 585–589.
Miles, Lynden K., Jordan L. Griffiths, Michael J. Richardson, and C. Neil Macrae. 2010. “Too
Late to Coordinate: Contextual Influences on Behavioral
Synchrony.” European Journal
of Social
Psychology 40 (1): 52–60.
Paxton, Alexandra, and Rick Dale. 2013. “Frame-Differencing
Methods for Measuring Bodily Synchrony in
Conversation.” Behavior
Research
Methods 45 (2): 329–343.
Phillips-Silver, Jessica and Peter E. Keller. 2012. “Searching
for Roots of Entrainment and Joint Action in Early Musical
Interactions.” Frontiers in
Human
Neuroscience, 6.
Rabinowitch, Tal-Chen, Ian Cross, and Pamela Burnard. 2013. “Long-Term
Musical Group Interaction Has a Positive Influence in
Empathy in
Children.” Psychology of
Music 41 (4): 484–498.
Ramseyer, Fabian, and Wolfgang Tschacher. 2008. “Synchrony
in Dyadic Psychotherapy
Sessions.” In Simultaneity:
Temporal Structures and Observer
Perspectives, ed
by Susie Vrobel, Otto E. Rössler, and Terry Marks-Tarlow, 329–347. Singapore: World Scientific.
Reddish, Paul, Joseph Bulbulia, and Ronald Fischer. 2014. “Does
Synchrony Promote Generalized
Prosociality?” Religion,
Brain and
Behavior 4 (1): 3–19.
Reddish, Paul, Ronald Fischer, and Joseph BulbuliA. 2013. “Let’s
Dance Together: Synchrony, Shared Intentionality and
Cooperation.” Plos
One 8: 1–13. .
Richardson, Michael J., Kerry L. Marsh, Robert W. Isenhower, Justin R. L. Goodman, and Richard C. Schmidt. 2007. “Rocking
Together: Dynamics of Intentional and Unintentional
Interpersonal
Coordination.” Human Movement
Science 26 (6): 867–891.
Rossano, Federico. 2012. Gaze
Behavior in Face-to-Face
Interaction. PhD
dissertation. Radboud University, Nijmegen.
Schegloff, Emanuel A. 2007. Sequence
Organization in
Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schmidt, Richard C., and Beth O’Brien. 1997. “Evaluating
the Dynamics of Unintended Interpersonal
Coordination.” Ecological
Psychology 9: 189–206.
Shockley, Kevin, Aimee A. Baker, Michael J. Richardson, and Carol A. Fowler. 2007. “Articulatory
Constraints on Interpersonal Postural
Coordination.” Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and
Performance 33 (1): 201–208.
Shockley, Kevin, Daniel C. Richardson, and Rick Dale. 2009. “Conversation
and Coordinative
Structures.” Topics in
Cognitive
Science 1 (2): 305–319.
Shockley, Kevin, Maria-Vee Santana, and Carol A. Fowler. 2003. “Mutual
Interpersonal Postural Constraints Are Involved in
Cooperative
Conversation.” Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and
Performance 29 (2): 326–332.
Slaby, Jan, Asena Paskaleva, and Achim Stephan. 2013. “Enactive
Emotion and Impaired Agency in
Depression.” Journal of
Consciousness
Studies 20 (7–8): 33–55.
Sorjonen, Marja-LeenA. 2001. Responding
in Conversation: A Study of Response Particles in
Finnish. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Stevanovic, MelisA. 2012a. “Establishing
Joint Decisions in a
Dyad.” Discourse
Studies 14 (6): 779–803.
2012b. “Prosodic
Salience and the Emergence of New Decisions: On the Prosody
of Approval in Finnish Workplace
Interaction.” Journal of
Pragmatics 44 (6), 843–862.
Stevanovic, Melisa, and Anssi Peräkylä. 2014. “Three
Orders in the Organization of Human Action: On the Interface
Between Knowledge, Power, and Emotion in Interaction and
Social Relations.” Language
in
Society 43 (2): 185–207.
. 2015. “Experience
Sharing, Emotional Reciprocity, and
Turn-Taking.” Frontiers in
Psychology 6: 450.
Stevanovic, Melisa, Tommi Himberg, Maija Niinisalo, Mikko Kahri, Anssi Peräkylä, Mikko Sams, and Riitta Hari. 2017. “Sequentiality,
Mutual Visibility, and Behavioral Matching: Body Sway and
Pitch Register During Joint Decision
Making.” Research on Language
and Social
Interaction 50 (1): 33–53.
Tabensky, Alexis. 2001. “Gesture
and Speech Rephrasings in
Conversation.” Gesture 1 (2): 213–236.
Tomasello, Michael and Malinda Carpenter. 2007. “Shared
Intentionality.” Developmental
science 10: 121–125.
Valdesolo, Piercarlo, and David DeSteno. 2011. “Synchrony
and the Social Tuning of
Compassion.” Emotion 11 (2): 262–266.
Valdesolo, Piercarlo, Jennifer Ouyang, and David DeSteno. 2010. “The
Rhythm of Joint Action: Synchrony Promotes Cooperative
Ability.” Journal of
Experimental Social
Psychology 46: 693–695.
Vatanen, AnnA. 2014. Responding
in Overlap: Agency, Epistemicity and Social Action in
Conversation. PhD
dissertation. University of Helsinki, Department of Finnish, Finno-Ugric and Scandinavian Studies.
Warner-Garcia, Shawn. 2013. “Gestural
Resonance: The Negotiation of Differential Form and Function
in Embodied
Action.” Crossroads of
Language, Interaction and
Culture, 9, 55–78.
Cited by (1)
Cited by one other publication
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 29 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
