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Social Coordination in Agents with Deficits – SCAD

Defining social interaction and its deficits through the study of motor markers

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The relevance of motor coordination to understand social deficits

Social psychologists have been investigating naturalistic behavioral ‘entrainment’ processes in social interactions since the 1960’s and found that this motor coordination embodies functionally important dyadic psychological characteristics such as rapport. We take little notice of this coordination in our everyday social interactions. However, everyone notices a breakdown in the fluidity of an interaction with a patient with a social disorder. In pathologies such as schizophrenia and social phobia, this breakdown is not limited to verbal interactions but extends to nonverbal motor behaviors. However, motor behaviors in social interactions have been hardly studied. The goal of this project was to determine the social deficits through motor coordination analysis as well as neural investigation of motor social interactions. This can identify the predictors of interaction disorders. In order to complete the study of social deficits, artificial agents (also still lack the ability to coordinate with another agent) highlight the interest of investigating motor coordination to define the level of social competence of any agents.

In order to analyze the level of motor social coordination we used the non-intentional coordination paradigm. Patients and healthy participants were seated side by side instructed to swing hand-held pendulums at their preferred frequency with or without vision of the other one’s pendulum. Spontaneous coordination occurs as soon as participants perceived the other participant’s pendulum. Such a paradigm was applied to rhythmic right arm movements while observing a video displaying different types of agent (human or artificial). The intentional paradigm was also utilized when participants were asked to voluntarily synchronize with the other participant. These paradigms were performed with different populations of participant: healthy, patient with schizophrenia and social phobia, artificial agent and first-degree relative of patients. Complementary to the motor analysis, a neuroimaging paradigm using functional magnetic resonance imaging was developed to localize areas devoted to social motor coordination. Finally, all patients performed traditional psychological tests and questionnaires for each experimental session.

The results of this project showed that the motor behavior analysis is able to discriminate mental pathologies such as schizophrenia and social phobia. It can also predict the onset of mental pathologies through motor disorders observation of schizophrenic first-degree relatives (diagnosed as healthy). The results also determined the neural localization of social deficits indicating that the connectivity between neural structures is impaired. This project was the basic foundation of a European consortium dedicated to the study of motor properties able to enhance patients’ social competence.

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This project yielded the publication of 14 articles (published or submitted) and 34 proceedings in international or national conferences (5 were invited). This project launched 3 European or national grant proposals (2 are funded and 1 is submitted) and developed several international and national collaborations based on the concept of motor markers of social interaction.

Social interaction is the hallmark of the human species. Past social and developmental psychological research has demonstrated that people interacting do not only communicate with language, their bodily movements are also tacitly coordinated. Social psychologists have been investigating naturalistic behavioral 'entrainment' processes in social interactions since the 1960's and found that this motor coordination embodies functionally important dyadic psychological characteristics such as rapport. We take little notice of this coordination in our everyday social interactions. However, everyone notices a breakdown in the fluidity of an interaction with a patient with a social disorder. In pathologies such as schizophrenia and social phobia, this breakdown is not limited to verbal interactions but extends to nonverbal motor behaviors. Dysfunctional motor coordination could be a patent cue of social disorder. Similarly, the absence of coordination by artificial agents could limit the social competence of their interactions. Social phobia patients are reluctant to take part in an interaction and to maintain eye contact with another person. Their behavior is characterized by behavioral inhibition as well as awkward hand gestures and body posture. The association of social and motor disorders raises the question of dysfunctional motor coordination. In order to determine whether these patients are less synchronized because of impairment specific to social cognition or because of the pathology's indirect influence on motor behavior, we will compare their coordination with schizophrenic patients whose attentional deficit is most salient. If results support that dysfunction of motor coordination results from a specific impairment of social cognition in social phobics patients, we will assess the effectiveness of a cognitive-behavior therapy using a humanoid robot to strengthen patients' coordination and improve the social competence of their interactions. Artificial agents such as humanoid robots also still lack the ability to coordinate with another agent. This absence could participate to the feeling of repulsion that has been attributed to realistic albeit imperfect anthropomorphic agents. While this 'uncanny valley of eeriness" experience was originally attributed to the appearance and motion of androids, recent developments point to the importance of integrated behaviors. In this context, the lack of motor coordination is a very promising candidate to explain the eeriness feeling when interacting with android robots. Although different fields have investigated social interaction, little work has been performed to integrate their approaches in an interdisciplinary study. We propose to remedy this situation by using an interdisciplinary paradigm to examine the multilevel processes that characterize motor coordination and its consequences on social interactions. A consortium of four research teams (psychologists from CHC, motor control researchers from EDM, neuroscientists from INCM and psychiatrists from SUPA) proposes to examine motor coordination in healthy individuals and its impairments in patients with social disorders to understand Social Coordination of Agents with Deficits (SCAD). The originality of this project is to go beyond individual members' investigation of social interactions to apprehend the integration between neural, behavioral and social levels of normal and dysfunctional cognition. In order to investigate the social motor coordination and its deficits, we propose three Tasks. Task 1 is a preliminary inquiry that uses multiple paradigms to explore the motor coordination of agents with deficits in sociality as well as develop a procedure that identifies the neural markers of motor coordination using human neuroimaging techniques fMRI and MEG. Task 2 is to investigate social, behavioral and neural processes that may be impaired in patients with social disorders. Finally, Task 3 applies the results of the previous experiments to propose guidelines to help patients with social disorders and robots enhance their motor coordination, and hence, improve the social competence of their interactions. 212 Persons Month will be devoted to the SCAD project with a total cost of HT 1 270 076 ', and a total requested ANR budget of only HT 351 555 '. It is the first step in an interdisciplinary European project (FP7, STREP/cooperation or ERC/IDEA), based on a Montpellier-Marseille consortium that should lead to developments in fundamental research in social interactions of normal individuals and psychiatric patients that leads to mental health and industrial robotic applications.

Project coordination

The author of this summary is the project coordinator, who is responsible for the content of this summary. The ANR declines any responsibility as for its contents.

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Beginning and duration of the scientific project: - 0 Months

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