A Sensorimotor Signature of the Transition to Conscious Social Perception: Co-regulation of Active and Passive Touch.
Hiroki Kojima, Tom Froese, Mizuki Oka, Hiroyuki Iizuka, Takashi Ikegami
Frontiers in Psychology 2017 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01778 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Secondary analysis of an experimental study (perceptual crossing experiment) Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Pairs of adults interacting in a perceptual crossing experiment |
| Measures | turn-taking, movement synchrony, transfer entropy |
| Keywords | Agency detection Direct perception Embodied cognition Intersubjectivity Social interaction |
| Key findings | The transition to consciously perceiving another's presence was marked by a significant increase in one's passive reception of the other's tactile stimulation. Unexpectedly, this experience of passive touch was consistently followed by a switch to active touching of the other, while the other became more passive, which the authors interpret as evidence that the intersubjective experience was reciprocally co-regulated by both participants. |
Abstract
It is not yet well understood how we become conscious of the presence of other people as being other subjects in their own right. Developmental and phenomenological approaches are converging on a relational hypothesis: my perception of a "you" is primarily constituted by another subject's attention being directed toward "me." This is particularly the case when my body is being physically explored in an intentional manner. We set out to characterize the sensorimotor signature of the transition to being aware of the other by re-analyzing time series of embodied interactions between pairs of adults (recorded during a "perceptual crossing" experiment). Measures of turn-taking and movement synchrony were used to quantify social coordination, and transfer entropy was used to quantify direction of influence. We found that the transition leading to one's conscious perception of the other's presence was indeed characterized by a significant increase in one's passive reception of the other's tactile stimulations. Unexpectedly, one's clear experience of such passive touch was consistently followed by a switch to active touching of the other, while the other correspondingly became more passive, which suggests that this intersubjective experience was reciprocally co-regulated by both participants.