Research on Social Rhythm and Social Timing
My research interest in the role of timing for social interaction was ignited through my work with my friend Christine Falter in Cologne. Christine has done extensive research on interval timing perception in autism and found atypical processing of time for autistic people. On the production side of coordination abilities, I had to wonder why timing factors have been largely ignored in most joint action paradigms I was aware of at the time. After all, it seemed obvious to me that time would be crucial for interpersonal coordination. I then came across two main texts that further fueled my interest in the timing dimension for the social domain: The first was reading Hanneke De Jaegher's dissertation (pdf link here) thesis and the second was discovering a 2014 paper on "Rhythm in Joint Action" by Peter Keller.
I am now working on several projects investigating the role of timing and rhythm perception and production on the one hand and interpersonal abilities, on the other:
My research interest in the role of timing for social interaction was ignited through my work with my friend Christine Falter in Cologne. Christine has done extensive research on interval timing perception in autism and found atypical processing of time for autistic people. On the production side of coordination abilities, I had to wonder why timing factors have been largely ignored in most joint action paradigms I was aware of at the time. After all, it seemed obvious to me that time would be crucial for interpersonal coordination. I then came across two main texts that further fueled my interest in the timing dimension for the social domain: The first was reading Hanneke De Jaegher's dissertation (pdf link here) thesis and the second was discovering a 2014 paper on "Rhythm in Joint Action" by Peter Keller.
I am now working on several projects investigating the role of timing and rhythm perception and production on the one hand and interpersonal abilities, on the other:
- I am working with Simone Dalla-Bella on a project investigating for the first time beat-based timing perception and production in autism. We are currently using a tablet version of the BAASTA battery to achieve a comprehensive understanding of rhythmic abilities in autism and how these may relate to interpersonal abilities.
- Together with Wolfgang Tschacher and Antonia Hamilton, I am working on a project looking at a specific phenomenon of interpersonal coordination: behavioural snychronisation. We are investigating synchrony in naturalistic settings with dyads of autistic people, typically developing people and mixed dyads. We are using Motion Energy Analysis to quantify movement in time-series from video-taped conversations. We further use cross-correlation and wavelet analyses.
- I am working with Antonia Hamilton on a project investigating the role of contiguity (i.e. temporal proximity) in a particular phenomenon of social coordination: behavioural mimicry. We are using motion capture, virtual reality and fNIRS to study the temporal structure of mimicry.