Functioning within a relationship: mother-infant synchrony and infant sleep

The aim of this study was to investigate the coupling of the biological system of infant sleep and the social system of mother-infant synchrony. Before birth and shortly after birth the systems appear to be connected, but it is unclear whether this remains the case over time. This study therefore examined whether infant sleep measured at 6 weeks and 5 months could predict mother-infant gaze synchrony after a social challenge at 5 months (N=84). Infant sleep was measured in terms of sleep bout duration, which normally increases during this period. Gaze was defined in terms of looking at each other's head simultaneously, known as gaze synchrony, or looking elsewhere. Results showed that infant sleep could predict the temporal dynamics of the mother-infant interaction in terms of flexibility of gaze pattern shifts. The larger the increase in sleep bout duration over age, the more flexible the interaction appeared to be. Maternal Age, type of feeding and change of feeding appeared to function as confounding variables in this relation. Infant sleep could not predict percentage of synchrony (central tendency measure) or the average sequence length of gaze patterns (temporal dynamic measure).     

Mother and infant coordinate heart rhythms through episodes of interaction synchrony

Animal studies demonstrated the powerful impact of maternal-infant social contact on the infant's physiological systems, yet the online effects of social interactions on the human infant's physiology remain poorly understood. Mothers and their 3-month old infants were observed during face-to-face interactions while cardiac output was collected from mother and child. Micro-analysis of the partners’ behavior marked episodes of gaze, affect, and vocal synchrony. Time-series analysis showed that mother and infant coordinate heart rhythms within lags of less than 1 s. Bootstrapping analysis indicated that the concordance between maternal and infant biological rhythms increased significantly during episodes of affect and vocal synchrony compared to non-synchronous moments. Humans, like other mammals, can impact the physiological processes of the attachment partner through the coordination of visuo-affective social signals.     

The rhythm of rapport: Interpersonal synchrony and social perception

The temporal coordination of behavior during dyadic interactions is a foundation for effective social exchange with synchronized actions enhancing perceptions of rapport and interpersonal connectedness. What has yet to be established, however, are the precise characteristics of behavioral coordination that give rise to such effects. Informed by a dynamical systems approach, the current investigation considered whether judgments of rapport are influenced by the mode of interpersonal synchrony. In two experiments, participants rated the degree of rapport manifest by a simulated pair of walkers exhibiting various configurations of synchronized strides. The results revealed that the highest levels of rapport were associated with the most stable forms of interpersonal coordination (i.e., in-phase and anti-phase synchrony), regardless of whether coordination between the walkers was conveyed via the presentation of visual (Expt. 1a) or auditory (Expt. 1b) cues. These findings underscore the importance of interpersonal coordination to core aspects of social perception.     

Behavioral confirmation in social interaction: From social perception to social reality

A perceiver's actions, although based upon initially erroneous beliefs about a target individual may channel social interaction in ways that cause the behavior of the target to confirm the perceiver's beliefs. To chart this process of behavioral confirmation, we observed successive interactions between one target and two perceivers. In the first interaction, targets who interacted with perceivers who anticipated hostile partners displayed greater behavioral hostility than targets whose perceivers expected nonhostile partners. Only when targets regarded their actions as reflections of personal dispositions did these behavioral differences in hostility persevere into their subsequent interactions with naive perceivers who had no prior knowledge about them. Theoretical implications of the behavioral confirmation construct for social perception processes are discussed.     

Chronic stress in the mother-infant dyad: Maternal hair cortisol,infant salivary cortisol and interactional synchrony

Stress physiology is shaped by early experience, with enduring effects on health. The relation of chronic maternal physiological stress, as indexed by hair cortisol, to infants’ stress systems and to mother-infant interaction quality has not been established. We examined maternal hair and salivary cortisol, six-month-old infants’ salivary cortisol, and mother-infant interaction in 121 mother-infant dyads. High maternal hair cortisol was related to higher infant average salivary cortisol concentration. Maternal hair cortisol and bedtime salivary cortisol were both uniquely related to infant bedtime salivary cortisol. Mothers with higher hair cortisol were more intrusive and had lower positive engagement synchrony with their infants. Maternal intrusiveness moderated the association of maternal hair cortisol and infant salivary cortisol, such that maternal hair and infant average salivary cortisol were related only when mothers were more intrusive. Maternal chronic physiological stress may upregulate infants’ developing stress systems, particularly in the context of lower mother-infant interaction quality.     

From social talk to social action: shaping the social triad with emotion sharing

Seemingly trivial social talk provides fertile ground for emotion sharing (a narrator and audience's realization that they experience the same emotional response toward a target), which in turn creates a coalition between the narrator and the audience, configures the narrator and audience's relationship with the target, and coordinates their target-directed action. In this article, the authors use 4 studies to investigate this thesis. In Studies 1 and 2--where participants rated scenarios in which narrators told them anecdotes--the authors found that when there was emotion sharing (a) participants were more bonded with narrators, (b) the narrator and audience's relationship with the target (as reflected in action tendencies) was determined by the emotionality of the anecdotes, and (c) they coordinated their target-directed actions. Study 3 demonstrated that this effect was indeed due to emotion sharing. Study 4 provided behavioral evidence for the effects of emotion sharing using a 2-person trust game. Together, these studies reveal that the everyday act of social talk is a powerful act that is able to shape the social triad of the narrator, the audience, and the social target, with powerful consequences for social structure and group action.     

From apathy to social activism

The study of social change has neglected the dynamics motivating individuals to join mass movements. Particularly obscure is how apathetic people are transformed into social activists. Considering this problem the author suggests three stages of development through which the individual progresses in attaining a higher level of personal and social maturity. The first stage ‐ dreaming ‐emerges when the individual aspires to change while wishing to avoid the risks involved. The second ‐ the illusion of power ‐ occurs when the hunger for power and the fear of it are mediated. The third ‐ real power ‐ is promoted by the yearning for self‐respect and social acceptance and is manifested by competence in gaining supremacy and actual experience in struggle. As a consequence of this process the individual advances from a subjective self‐image to perceiving himself as a social being; society is humanized by the greater participation of individuals.     

Circadian rhythms in executive function during the transition to adolescence: the effect of synchrony between chronotype and time of day

To explore the influence of circadian rhythms on executive function during early adolescence, we administered a battery of executive function measures (including a Go-Nogo task, the Iowa Gambling Task, a Self-ordered Pointing task, and an Intra/Extradimensional Shift task) to Morning-preference and Evening-preference participants (N = 80) between the ages of 11 and 14 years who were tested in the morning or afternoon. Significant Chronotype × Time of Day interactions (controlling for amount of sleep the previous night) revealed that adolescents tested at their optimal times of day performed better than those tested at their nonoptimal times. Implications for our understanding of physiological arousal, sleep, and executive function during adolescence are discussed.     

From political philosophy to social theory

Critical accounts of the origins of sociology stress both continuity and change as they are related to previous styles of political and social thought. This article further extends these accounts. It analyzes substantive as well as formal continuities and changes in the transition from political to social conceptions of order. Both intellectual and societal factors are responsible for this theoretical transition. Explicitly political and social conceptions of order reflected two stages in the development of European society. But purely internal, intellectual factors, involving the refinement of empirical analysis, called into question political theories of society. Finally, the article makes explicit and defends the distinction between bourgeois and Marxist varieties of theoretical reflection with reference to the transition from political philosophy to social theory.     

Attraction and social coordination: mutual entrainment of vocal activity rhythms

To investigate factors that affect the mutual entrainment of vocal activity rhythms, female general psychology students paired according to attitude similarity questionnaires engaged in 40-minute introductory conversations. Fourier analyses performed on speakers' on-off vocal activity demonstrated periodic oscillations in talkativeness. Although some dyads coordinated their vocal activity rhythms, speech accommodation was not predicted by attitude similarity or attraction and did not affect ratings of conversation quality. These rhythms of dialogue appear resistant to change, their behavioral momentum rooted perhaps in an underlying chronobiology.     

Affect regulation and synchrony in mother—infant play as precursors to the development of symbolic competence

This study examines relationships between organizing processes of affective communication in infancy and the development of symbolic competence. Thirty six mother—infant dyads were observed at 3 and 9 months, and 32 dyads were reassessed at 24 months. Mother's and infant affective states during face-to-face play at 3 and 9 months were coded in .25-second frames. The underlying structure of infant affect and the time-lag synchrony between mother and infant affective states were assessed with time-series analyses. In addition, interactions at 3 and 9 months were assessed for the global level of infant positive affect and maternal affect attunement. At 2 years, three dimensions of symbolic competence were evaluated: symbolic play, verbal IQ, and the child's use of internal states words. Infant affect regulation at 3 months, defined by the existence of a non-random, stochastic-cyclic organization of affective states, predicted all three domains of symbolic competence at 2 years. Maternal synchrony and attunement each had an independent contribution to the prediction of symbolic play and internal state talk. The microanalytic and global indices of affect each added meaningfully to the prediction of symbolic functioning. The organization of behavioral sequences into coherent affective configurations is discussed as a possible precursor to the general capacity to develop symbols. © 1997 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health     

Adolescent social anxiety undermines adolescent-parent interbrain synchrony during emotional processing: A hyperscanning study

Social anxiety severely impacts adolescents’ social interactions with others; however, the underlying neural mechanism has not been revealed. This study examined how adolescent's social anxiety level influences the interbrain synchrony within adolescent-parent dyads during emotional processing by using electroencephalograph (EEG) hyperscanning. A sample of 25 adolescent-parent dyads completed the picture processing task. Adolescents’ ages ranged from 10 to 14 years old. The results showed that (1) at parietal areas, greater gamma interbrain synchrony was observed in the high social anxiety adolescent-parent dyads (HSAs) than the low social anxiety adolescent-parent dyads (LSAs) in the positive conditions. However, greater gamma interbrain synchrony of the picture processing task was observed in the LSAs than the HSAs in the negative conditions. (2) Compared with the neutral condition, LSAs induced greater interbrain synchronization in the negative condition than in the neutral condition at central and parietal areas. However, HSAs induced greater interbrain synchronization in the positive condition than in the negative condition at parietal areas. (3) HSAs induced greater interbrain synchronization at parietal areas than in the central areas in positive conditions. The results provide neurological evidence that the way parent and adolescent process different emotions in the same emotional episode could be affected by the adolescent's anxiety level.     

从动作模仿到社会认知：自我-他人控制的作用

在社会互动中, 人们具有自动模仿他人动作的倾向。尽管这种自动模仿有利于个体理解他人动作的感受, 但有时也会与自身的动作意图产生冲突。因此我们需要将自身动作意图与他人动作进行区分并调控二者之间的冲突。这种能力被称为自我-他人控制(self-other control, SOC)。与动作模仿控制相同, 心理理论、观点采择和共情等更高级的社会认知同样涉及对自我和他人信息的加工。很多证据表明, SOC可能是一种领域普遍的(domain-general)加工机制, 即在动作模仿控制和其他社会认知中, 大脑对自我和他人双方信息的区分和冲突调控共用同一套SOC系统。最近一些研究发现, 相比于抑制自身优势反应的抑制控制(inhibitory control), SOC是社会认知中一个更为关键的影响因素, 抑制控制对社会认知的作用受到SOC的调节。此外, SOC的领域普遍性提示我们, 未来可以通过简单的动作模仿控制训练, 来为社会认知受损个体(如孤独症和述情障碍者)进行康复训练。     

From empire to democracy: effects of social progress on Turkish writers

What is the effect of a society's culture on the creative writers living there? Few cultures have had such a event as Ataturk's 1920 revolution that changed Turkey from a monarchy ruled by sultans into a republic. How would such a dramatic shift in a country's history be reflected in the accomplishments and characteristics of its writers? In this study, the authors investigated 948 eminent Turkish writers. Variables of gender, era, type of writing, education level, profession, and winning an award were all analyzed. The type of writing (fiction, poetry, plays, or nonfiction) and the era in which the writing was produced were both predictive of whether an author won a literary award. Before 1920, fiction writers received more awards than poets; after 1920, poets received more awards. In addition, professional writers were more likely to win awards than were professional politicians. Reasons for these findings are discussed with an emphasis on cultural and historical influences.