School of Psychology, The University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK.
School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences, Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK.
Sci Rep. 2021 Nov 24;11(1):22869. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-02372-2.
Interpersonal synchrony is a fundamental part of human social interaction, with known effects on facilitating social bonding. Moving in time with another person facilitates prosocial behaviour, however, it is unknown if the degree of synchronisation predicts the degree of social bonding. Similarly, while people readily fall in synchrony even without being instructed to do so, we do not know whether such spontaneous synchronisation elicits similar prosocial effects as instructed synchronisation. Across two studies, we investigated how context (social vs non-social stimulus) and instruction (instructed vs uninstructed) influenced synchronisation accuracy and bonding with the interaction partner in adults and children. The results revealed improved visuomotor synchrony within a social, compared to non-social, context in adults and children. Children, but not adults, synchronised more accurately when instructed to synchronise than when uninstructed. For both children and adults, synchronisation in a social context elicited stronger social bonding towards an interaction partner as compared to synchronisation in a non-social context. Finally, children's, but not adults', degree of synchrony with the partner was significantly associated with their feelings of social closeness. These findings illuminate the interaction of sensorimotor coupling and joint action in social contexts and how these mechanisms facilitate synchronisation ability and social bonding.
人际同步是人类社会互动的基本组成部分，已知它对促进社交联系有影响。与他人同步移动有助于促进亲社会行为，但尚不清楚同步的程度是否可以预测社交联系的程度。同样，尽管人们无需被指示就可以轻易地同步，但我们不知道这种自发的同步是否会产生与指令同步相同的亲社会效果。在两项研究中，我们研究了在成人和儿童中，情境（社交与非社交刺激）和指令（指令与非指令）如何影响同步准确性和与互动伙伴的联系。结果表明，成人和儿童在社交情境中比在非社交情境中表现出更高的运动同步性。与非指令相比，儿童在指令下的同步更准确，但成人并非如此。对于儿童和成人来说，与社交情境相比，在非社交情境中同步会引起与互动伙伴更强的社交联系。最后，与伙伴同步的程度与儿童的社交亲密感显著相关，但与成人的则不然。这些发现阐明了在社交情境中传感器运动耦合和联合行动的相互作用，以及这些机制如何促进同步能力和社交联系。
