Coordinated Interpersonal Behaviour in Collective Dance Improvisation: The Aesthetics of Kinaesthetic Togetherness.

Collective dance improvisation (e.g., traditional and social dancing, contact improvisation) is a participatory, relational and embodied art form which eschews standard concepts in aesthetics.

Analysing change in music therapy interactions of children with communication difficulties.

Music therapy has been found to improve communicative behaviours and joint attention in children with autism, but it is unclear what in the music therapy sessions drives those changes. We developed an annotation protocol and tools to accumulate large datasets of music therapy, for analysis of interaction dynamics. Analysis of video recordings of improvisational music therapy sessions focused on simple, unambiguous individual and shared behaviours: movement and facing behaviours, rhythmic activity and musical structures and the relationships between them.

Word-by-word entrainment of speech rhythm during joint story building.

Movements and behavior synchronize during social interaction at many levels, often unintentionally. During smooth conversation, for example, participants adapt to each others' speech rates. Here we aimed to find out to which extent speakers adapt their turn-taking rhythms during a story-building game.

Synchrony of brains and bodies during implicit interpersonal interaction.

To successfully interact with others, people automatically mimic their actions and feelings. Yet, neurobehavioral studies of interaction are few because of lacking conceptual and experimental frameworks. A recent study introduced an elegantly simple motor task to unravel implicit interpersonal behavioral synchrony and brain function during face-to-face interaction.