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Shockley Kevin – Interpersonal Coordination and Embodied Communication

The present research evaluates the mutual influence of coordination and communication, specifically in the context of postural sway coordination dynamics. Decades of research have demonstrated the spontaneous coordination that occurs between conversing individuals, ranging from linguistic alignment to postural sway coordination. Over the past decade, a variety of research has also demonstrated a meaningful (and, perhaps, bidirectional) relation between cognition and action/movement. Based on these findings, the present research investigates the following question: Does the movement coordination observed during cooperative conversation reflect the cognitive coordination required for effective communication? Two experiments investigate the influence of cognitive manipulations on movement coordination and two experiments investigate the influence of movement constraints on communication. The results suggest that the movement coordination observed during conversation may indeed embody the cognitive coordination required for effective communication.