Information density as a predictor of communication dynamics.

In a recent paper, Aceves and Evans computed information and semantic density measures for hundreds of languages, and showed that these measures predict the pace and breadth of ideas in communication. Here, we summarize their key findings and situate them in a broader debate about the adaptive nature of language.

BERTs of a feather: Studying inter- and intra-group communication via information theory and language models.

When communicating, individuals alter their language to fulfill a myriad of social functions. In particular, linguistic convergence and divergence are fundamental in establishing and maintaining group identity. Quantitatively characterizing linguistic convergence is important when testing hypotheses surrounding language, including interpersonal and group communication. We provide a quantitative interpretation of linguistic convergence grounded in information theory. We then construct a computational model, built on top of a neural network model of language, that can be deployed to measure and test hypotheses about linguistic convergence in "big data." We demonstrate the utility of our convergence measurement in two case studies: (1) showing that our measurement is indeed sensitive to linguistic convergence across turns in dyadic conversation, and (2) showing that our convergence measurement is sensitive to social factors that mediate convergence in Internet-based communities (specifically, r/MensRights and r/MensLib). Our measurement also captures differences in which social factors influence web-based communities. We conclude by discussing methodological and theoretical implications of this semantic convergence analysis.

(Mis)align: a simple dynamic framework for modeling interpersonal coordination.

As people coordinate in daily interactions, they engage in different patterns of behavior to achieve successful outcomes. This includes both synchrony-the temporal coordination of the same behaviors at the same time-and complementarity-the coordination of the same or different behaviors that may occur at different relative times. Using computational methods, we develop a simple framework to describe the interpersonal dynamics of behavioral synchrony and complementarity over time, and explore their task-dependence. A key feature of this framework is the inclusion of a task context that mediates interactions, and consists of active, inactive, and inhibitory constraints on communication. Initial simulation results show that these task constraints can be a robust predictor of simulated agents' behaviors over time. We also show that the framework can reproduce some general patterns observed in human interaction data. We describe preliminary theoretical implications from these results, and relate them to broader proposals of synergistic self-organization in communication.

Thinking about life in COVID-19: An exploratory study on the influence of temporal framing on streams-of-consciousness.

The COVID-19 global pandemic led to major upheavals in daily life. As a result, mental health has been negatively impacted for many, including college students who have faced increased stress, depression, anxiety, and social isolation. How we think about the future and adjust to such changes may be partly mediated by how we situate our experiences in relation to the pandemic. To test this idea, we investigate how temporal framing influences the way participants think about COVID life. In an exploratory study, we investigate the influence of thinking of life before versus during the pandemic on subsequent thoughts about post-pandemic life. Participants wrote about their lives in a stream-of-consciousness style paradigm, and the linguistic features of their thoughts are extracted using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC). Initial results suggest principal components of LIWC features can distinguish the two temporal framings just from the content of their post-pandemic-oriented texts alone. We end by discussing theoretical implications for our understanding of personal experience and self-generated narrative. We also discuss other aspects of the present data that may be useful for investigating these thought processes in the future, including document-level features, typing dynamics, and individual difference measures.

Quantifying Interdisciplinarity in Cognitive Science and Beyond.

Recent publications have lamented the dominance of psychology in cognitive science. However, this relies on a limited definition of collaboration between fields. We call for a renewed conception of interdisciplinarity as a "mixture of expertise." We describe an information-theoretic measure of interdisciplinarity and apply it to multiauthored published articles. Results suggest that cognitive science journals mix expertise more than topically related journals. We suggest that perceptions of diminishing interdisciplinarity may in part be due to the emergence of different theoretical perspectives and use a semantic model to illustrate this argument. We conclude by describing some benefits of this broader conception.

An Approach to Aligning Categorical and Continuous Time Series for Studying the Dynamics of Complex Human Behavior.

An emerging perspective on human cognition and performance sees it as a kind of self-organizing phenomenon involving dynamic coordination across the body, brain and environment. Measuring this coordination faces a major challenge. Time series obtained from such cognitive, behavioral, and physiological coordination are often complicated in terms of non-stationarity and non-linearity, and in terms of continuous vs. categorical scales. Researchers have proposed several analytical tools and frameworks. One method designed to overcome these complexities is recurrence quantification analysis, developed in the study of non-linear dynamics. It has been applied in various domains, including linguistic (categorical) data or motion (continuous) data. However, most previous studies have applied recurrence methods individually to categorical or continuous data. To understand how complex coordination works, an integration of these types of behavior is needed. We aimed to integrate these methods to investigate the relationship between language (categorical) and motion (continuous) directly. To do so, we added temporal information (a time stamp) to categorical data (i.e., language), and applied joint recurrence analysis methods to visualize and quantify speech-motion coordination coupling during a rap performance. We illustrate how new dynamic methods may capture this coordination in a small case-study design on this expert rap performance. We describe a case study suggesting this kind of dynamic analysis holds promise, and end by discussing the theoretical implications of studying complex performances of this kind as a dynamic, coordinated phenomenon.

In-vitro trabecular bone damage following mono- and bicortical mini implants anchorage in mini-implant assisted rapid palatal expansion (MARPE).

OBJECTIVES: To assess in-vitro trabecular bone damage following mono- and bicortical mini-implant (MI) anchorage in mini-implant assisted rapid palatal expansion (MARPE). MATERIAL AND METHODS: Sixteen self-drilling MI (four MARPE appliances) were distributed in two groups according to bone insertion (monocortical and bicortical) in bovine rib. The device was activated five times (0.5mm each). Trabecular bone damage was assessed using micro-CT scans made at baseline and after each activation by trabecular spacing parameter (Tb.Sp) (distance [mm] between the trabecular bone structure). These measurements were made in five different regions of interest (ROI) surrounding the screw (whole, superior, inferior, anterior and posterior). Two-way ANOVA with Tukey post-hoc analysis (α=0.05) was used to evaluate the effect of insertion type (monocortical vs. bicortical) and activation cycle (0-5) on trabecular damage. The time effect was evaluated using ANOVA-MR test effect with Bonferroni correction (α=0.003). The micro-CT images were also examined qualitatively. RESULTS: When analysing the individual ROIs, only the superior ROI had a significant difference (P<0.003) beginning at the fourth activation cycle. For the monocortical group, trabecular spacing was affected when the whole ROI was analysed beginning at the fourth activation cycle, while for the superior ROI, this difference became apparent beginning with the third activation cycle (P<0.003). For the qualitative analysis, it seems that only monocortical anchorage influences the trabecular bone in the superior area. CONCLUSIONS: Monocortical anchorage is more susceptible to bone damage around the MIs, with the superior (cervical) region most strongly affected.

Cooperation in sound and motion: Complexity matching in collaborative interaction.

Complex behaviors are layered with processes across timescales that must be coordinated with each other to accomplish cooperative goals. Complexity matching is the coordination of nested layers of behaviors across individuals. We hypothesize that complexity matching extends across individuals and their respective layers of processes when cooperating in joint tasks. We measured coordination in a joint tower building task through the layers of sound and movement patterns produced by partners and found that partners built higher towers when their sound patterns fell into more similar relations with each other across timescales, as measured by complexity matching. Our findings shed light on the function of complexity matching and lead to new hypotheses about multiscale coordination and communication. We discuss how complexity matching encompasses flexible and complementary dynamics between partners that support complex acts of human coordination. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Using mouse cursor tracking to investigate online cognition: Preserving methodological ingenuity while moving toward reproducible science.

Mouse cursor tracking has become a prominent method for characterizing cognitive processes, used in a wide variety of domains of psychological science. Researchers have demonstrated considerable ingenuity in the application of the approach, but the methodology has not undergone systematic analysis to facilitate the development of best practices. Furthermore, recent research has demonstrated effects of experimental design features on a number of mousetracking outcomes. We conducted a systematic review of the mouse-tracking literature to survey the reporting and spread of mouse variables (Cursor speed, Sampling rate, Training), physical characteristics of the experiments (Stimulus position, Response box position) and response requirements (Start procedure, Response procedure, Response deadline). This survey reveals that there is room for improvement in reporting practices, especially of subtler design features that researchers may have assumed would not impact research results (e.g., Cursor speed). We provide recommendations for future best practices in mouse-tracking studies and consider how best to standardize the mouse-tracking literature without excessively constraining the methodological flexibility that is essential to the field.

Comparison of Bone Turnover Biomarkers in Serum and Urine Measured on an Automated Analytical Platform.

BACKGROUND: Matched serum and urine samples from patients who had total hip replacement were used to assess serum-validated immunoassay reagents for use in urine. METHODS: Samples were evaluated by an automated electrochemiluminescent immunoassay (cobas e411; Roche Diagnostics) for C-terminal telopeptide of type I collagen isoform ß (ß-Crosslaps), osteocalcin N-terminal midfragment (N-MID OC), N-terminal propeptide of type I collagen (PINP), and interleukin 6 (IL-6). Spike and recovery experiments were utilized to assess urinary matrix effects. Correlations between serum and both raw and creatinine-corrected urinary measures were assessed. Short-term precision was assessed. RESULTS: Spike and recovery experiments indicated minimal matrix effects of urine for the ß-Crosslaps assay. Potential matrix effects were observed for the other analytes because N-MID OC and IL-6 tended to be slightly overrecovered, whereas PINP was underrecovered. There were strong correlations between serum ß-Crosslaps and raw (Spearman ρ [rs] = 0.725, P < 0.0001) and creatinine-corrected (rs = 0.793, P < 0.0001) urinary measures and moderate correlations between serum N-MID OC and raw (rs = 0.582, P < 0.0001) and creatinine-corrected (rs = 0.482, P < 0.0001) urinary measures. PINP was not detected in urine, and no significant serum-urine correlations were found for IL-6. Short-term precision for urinary levels of ß-Crosslaps, N-MID OC, and IL-6 were 1.6%, 6.3% and 14.4%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Urinary measurements of ß-Crosslaps and N-MID OC assays were correlated with serum measurements and had good short-term precision. Urinary PINP was not detectable. IL-6 can be measured in urine using this technology, but the levels did not correlate with serum levels, and the short-term precision was variable.

Body synchrony in triadic interaction.

Humans subtly synchronize body movement during face-to-face conversation. In this context, bodily synchrony has been linked to affiliation and social bonding, task success and comprehension, and potential conflict. Almost all studies of conversational synchrony involve dyads, and relatively less is known about the structure of synchrony in groups larger than two. We conducted an optic flow analysis of body movement in triads engaged in face-to-face conversation, and explored a common measure of synchrony: time-aligned bodily covariation. We correlated this measure of synchrony with a diverse set of covariates related to the outcome of interactions. Triads showed higher maximum cross-correlation relative to a surrogate baseline, and 'meta-synchrony', in that composite dyads in a triad tended to show correlated structure. A windowed analysis also revealed that synchrony varies widely across an interaction. As in prior studies, average synchrony was low but statistically reliable in just a few minutes of interaction. In an exploratory analysis, we investigated the potential function of body synchrony by predicting it from various covariates, such as linguistic style matching, liking, laughter and cooperative play in a behavioural economic game. Exploratory results do not reveal a clear function for synchrony, though colaughter within triads was associated with greater body synchrony, and is consistent with an earlier analysis showing a positive connection between colaughter and cooperation. We end by discussing the importance of expanding and codifying analyses of synchrony and assessing its function.

Language Origins Viewed in Spontaneous and Interactive Vocal Rates of Human and Bonobo Infants.

From the first months of life, human infants produce "protophones," speech-like, non-cry sounds, presumed absent, or only minimally present in other apes. But there have been no direct quantitative comparisons to support this presumption. In addition, by 2 months, human infants show sustained face-to-face interaction using protophones, a pattern thought also absent or very limited in other apes, but again, without quantitative comparison. Such comparison should provide evidence relevant to determining foundations of language, since substantially flexible vocalization, the inclination to explore vocalization, and the ability to interact socially by means of vocalization are foundations for language. Here we quantitatively compare data on vocalization rates in three captive bonobo (Pan paniscus) mother-infant pairs with various sources of data from our laboratories on human infant vocalization. Both humans and bonobos produced distress sounds (cries/screams) and laughter. The bonobo infants also produced sounds that were neither screams nor laughs and that showed acoustic similarities to the human protophones. These protophone-like sounds confirm that bonobo infants share with humans the capacity to produce vocalizations that appear foundational for language. Still, there were dramatic differences between the species in both quantity and function of the protophone and protophone-like sounds. The bonobo protophone-like sounds were far less frequent than the human protophones, and the human protophones were far less likely to be interpreted as complaints and more likely as vocal play. Moreover, we found extensive vocal interaction between human infants and mothers, but no vocal interaction in the bonobo mother-infant pairs-while bonobo mothers were physically responsive to their infants, we observed no case of a bonobo mother vocalization directed to her infant. Our cross-species comparison focuses on low- and moderate-arousal circumstances because we reason the roots of language entail vocalization not triggered by excitement, for example, during fighting or intense play. Language appears to be founded in flexible vocalization, used to regulate comfortable social interaction, to share variable affective states at various levels of arousal, and to explore vocalization itself.

How Do Different Types of Alignment Affect Perceived Entity Status?

Perceptions of entitativity are thought to be influenced by salient features such as the physical proximity and physical similarity of group members (Campbell in Behav Sci 3:14-25, 1958). But social interactions among group members involve a number of low-level alignment (Pickering and Garrod in Behav Brain Sci 27:212-225, 2004) and synchronization (Marsh et al. in Top Cogn Sci 1:320-339, 2009) processes. Conversational partners, for instance, become aligned in syntax, semantics, emotion, and bodily posture. In this paper, we explore whether alignment correlates with observers' judgments of entitativity, and, moreover, which specific forms of alignment have the strongest effects on these judgments. Results revealed that only emotional alignment had on effect on judgments of entitativity. We discuss how future work may further assess the role of various dimensions in shaping the perception of group status in linguistic interaction.

Complex Communication Dynamics: Exploring the Structure of an Academic Talk.

Communication is a multimodal phenomenon. The cognitive mechanisms supporting it are still understudied. We explored a natural dataset of academic lectures to determine how communication modalities are used and coordinated during the presentation of complex information. Using automated and semi-automated techniques, we extracted and analyzed, from the videos of 30 speakers, measures capturing the dynamics of their body movement, their slide change rate, and various aspects of their speech (speech rate, articulation rate, fundamental frequency, and intensity). There were consistent but statistically subtle patterns in the use of speech rate, articulation rate, intensity, and body motion across the presentation. Principal component analysis also revealed patterns of system-like covariation among modalities. These findings, although tentative, do suggest that the cognitive system is integrating body, slides, and speech in a coordinated manner during natural language use. Further research is needed to clarify the specific coordination patterns that occur between the different modalities.

Decision contamination in the wild: Sequential dependencies in online review ratings.

Current judgments are systematically biased by prior judgments. Such biases occur in ways that seem to reflect the cognitive system's ability to adapt to statistical regularities within the environment. These cognitive sequential dependencies have primarily been evaluated in carefully controlled laboratory experiments. In this study, we used these well-known laboratory findings to guide our analysis of two datasets, consisting of over 2.2 million business review ratings from Yelp and 4.2 million movie and television review ratings from Amazon. We explored how within-reviewer ratings are influenced by previous ratings. Our findings suggest a contrast effect: Current ratings are systematically biased away from prior ratings, and the magnitude of this bias decays over several reviews. This work is couched within a broader program that aims to use well-established laboratory findings to guide our understanding of patterns in naturally occurring and large-scale behavioral data.

Interacting Timescales in Perspective-Taking.

Through theoretical discussion, literature review, and a computational model, this paper poses a challenge to the notion that perspective-taking involves a fixed architecture in which particular processes have priority. For example, some research suggests that egocentric perspectives can arise more quickly, with other perspectives (such as of task partners) emerging only secondarily. This theoretical dichotomy-between fast egocentric and slow other-centric processes-is challenged here. We propose a general view of perspective-taking as an emergent phenomenon governed by the interplay among cognitive mechanisms that accumulate information at different timescales. We first describe the pervasive relevance of perspective-taking to cognitive science. A dynamical systems model is then introduced that explicitly formulates the timescale interaction proposed. This model illustrates that, rather than having a rigid time course, perspective-taking can be fast or slow depending on factors such as task context. Implications are discussed, with ideas for future empirical research.

The Bursts and Lulls of Multimodal Interaction: Temporal Distributions of Behavior Reveal Differences Between Verbal and Non-Verbal Communication.

Recent studies of naturalistic face-to-face communication have demonstrated coordination patterns such as the temporal matching of verbal and non-verbal behavior, which provides evidence for the proposal that verbal and non-verbal communicative control derives from one system. In this study, we argue that the observed relationship between verbal and non-verbal behaviors depends on the level of analysis. In a reanalysis of a corpus of naturalistic multimodal communication (Louwerse, Dale, Bard, & Jeuniaux, ), we focus on measuring the temporal patterns of specific communicative behaviors in terms of their burstiness. We examined burstiness estimates across different roles of the speaker and different communicative modalities. We observed more burstiness for verbal versus non-verbal channels, and for more versus less informative language subchannels. Using this new method for analyzing temporal patterns in communicative behaviors, we show that there is a complex relationship between verbal and non-verbal channels. We propose a "temporal heterogeneity" hypothesis to explain how the language system adapts to the demands of dialog.

Circulating Dkk1 and TRAIL Are Associated With Cognitive Decline in Community-Dwelling, Older Adults With Cognitive Concerns.

Background: Osteoporosis and Alzheimer's disease are common diseases of aging that would seem to be unrelated, but may be linked through the influence of bone-derived signals on brain function. The aim of the current study is to investigate the relationship between circulating levels of bone-related biomarkers and cognition. Methods: The population included 103 community-dwelling older individuals with memory concerns but without cognitive impairment. A global cognition summary measure was collected at baseline and 6, 12, and 18 months post-enrollment by converting raw scores from 19 cognitive function tests to z-scores and averaging. Baseline plasma concentrations of bone-related biomarkers, including undercarboxylated, carboxylated, and total osteocalcin, parathyroid hormone, C-terminal telopeptide of collagen 1 (CTX-1), procollagen type 1 amino-terminal propeptide, osteoprotegrin, osteopontin, Dickkopf WNT signaling pathway inhibitor 1 (Dkk1), sclerostin, and amyloid ß peptides (Aß40 and Aß42), were measured. Results: Using sex, age, and education-adjusted mixed-effects models, we found that baseline levels of TNF-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL; p < .001), Dkk1 (p = .014), and CTX-1 (p = .046) were related to the annual rate of change of global cognition over the 18 month follow-up. In cognitive domain-specific analysis, baseline TRAIL was found to be positively related to the annual rate of change in episodic (p < .001) and working memory (p = .016), and baseline Dkk1 was positively related to semantic memory (p = .027) and negatively related to working memory (p = .016). Conclusions: These results further confirm the link between bone and brain health and suggest that circulating levels of bone-related biomarkers may have diagnostic potential to predict worsening cognition.