Spontaneous bodily coordination varies across affective and intellectual child-adult interactions.

Research on child-adult interactions has identified that the morphology of bodily coordination seems to be sensitive to age and type of interaction. Mirror-like imitation emerges earlier in life and is more common during emotionally laden interactions, while anatomical imitation is acquired later and associated with cognitive tasks. However, it remains unclear whether these morphologies also vary with age and type of interaction during spontaneous coordination. Here we report a motion capture study comparing the spontaneous coordination patterns of thirty-five 3-year-old (20 girls; Mage = 3.15 years) and forty 6-year-old children (20 girls; Mage = 6.13 years) interacting with unacquainted adults during two storytelling sessions. The stories narrated the search of a character for her mother (Predominantly Affective Condition) or an object (Predominantly Intellectual Condition) inside a supermarket. Results show that children of both ages consistently coordinated their spontaneous movements towards adult storytellers, both in symmetric and asymmetric ways. However, symmetric coordination was more prominent in 3-year-old children and during predominantly emotional interactions, whereas asymmetric coordination prevailed in 6-year-old children and during predominantly intellectual interactions. These results add evidence from spontaneous interactions in favor of the hypothesis that symmetric coordination is associated with affective interactions and asymmetric coordination with intellectual ones.

Temporality, Language and Body in Collaborative Remembering: a Videographic Study.

Collaborative remembering involves bringing a story shared by a group of people back to the present. In this context, collaborative remembering has been studied following cues such as linguistic prompts that contribute to elicit memory in shared contexts. This study looks into collaborative remembering cues beyond their strictly linguistic character, which from a co-phenomenological standpoint comprises temporality, corporality and meaning making. A two-stage videographic analysis was required to undertake the study: (1) students partaking in meaningful interaction, and a (2) collaborative remembering instance, where two sets of three students met again, ten days after. Qualitative data analysis was undertaken, following Karl Bühler's organon model, simultaneously looking at bodily and temporal aspects, attending particularly to bodily motion coordination. Results show a pre-eminence of the appellative dimension alongside a prevalence of complementary over simultaneous patterns in collaborative remembering. A central aspect in this study is how collaborative remembering - including linguistic expressions- emerges as a coordinative phenomenon, where participants provide a joint account of remembered situations as a single being with a temporality of its own. These traits are discussed following a co-phenomenological approach to intersubjectivity.

Rol de la Familia en el Compromiso Escolar Desde la Perspectiva de Estudiantes con Necesidades Educativas Especiales / Family Role in the School Engagement from the Perspective of Students with Special Education Needs

RESUMEN: El compromiso escolar se entiende como el nivel de involucramiento del estudiante con su escuela, su sentido de pertenencia, y la motivación por aprender y obtener logros académicos. En este estudio se busca caracterizar el rol de la familia en el compromiso escolar desde la perspectiva de estudiantes con necesidades educativas especiales. Para tal efecto, se realizó un estudio cualitativo con enfoque fenomenológico. Los participantes son ocho estudiantes de primer y segundo año de enseñanza secundaria de la Región del Biobío, Chile. Se utilizó la técnica de fotoelicitación, narración fotográfica, y entrevistas. Se realizó análisis de contenido con los datos. Los resultados muestran que la dimensión emocional del compromiso escolar es la que más aparece reportada en la experiencia subjetiva de los estudiantes, a través de sentimientos relacionados con el "estar presente", el apoyo y la acogida. En segundo lugar, aparece la dimensión conductual del compromiso, a través del monitoreo, el uso de recordatorios y la reiteración sobre la importancia de estudiar. Finalmente, sobre la dimensión cognitiva, solo algunos estudiantes mencionan acciones de apoyo pedagógico de forma directa o indirecta. Respecto a las necesidades educativas especiales, estas no aparecen como un tema relevante en la experiencia de los participantes. Se discuten estos resultados respecto de la importancia del apoyo parental en el compromiso escolar de los estudiantes.

ABSTRACT: School engagement is the level of involvement of students with their school, their sense of belonging, and the motivation to learn and achieve academic goals. The purpose of this study was to characterize the role of the family on school engagement from the perspective of students with special educational needs. For this purpose, a qualitative study with a phenomenological focus was carried out. Eight Chilean students from first and second grade of secondary schools from the Biobio region, Chile, participated in the study. The study employed the technique of photo-elicitation, photographic narration, and interviews. Content analysis was performed with the data. The results show that the emotional dimension of school engagement is the most reported one, highlighting subjective experiences related to their families "being present", providing support, and making company. The behavioral dimension of the engagement appears to a lower extent, through parental actions such as monitoring, reminding school work, and stressing the importance of education. In relation to the cognitive dimension, fewer students mentioned families provided pedagogical support actions. Participants do not mention special educational needs as a relevant issue in their academic experience. Tese results are discussed highlighting the importance of family support on students' school engagement.

Influence of Teacher-Student Relationships and Special Educational Needs on Student Engagement and Disengagement: A Correlational study.

Contemporary educational research has found that student engagement and disengagement have a relevant influence on learning outcomes. However, research on the influence of teacher-student relationships in the engagement of students with special educational needs (SEN) is scarce. The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of teacher-student relationships, peer support at school, family support for learning, opportunities to participate at school, and SEN on engagement and disengagement of students using a sample of secondary students with SEN and typical development (TD). Through a non-experimental, correlational, and cross-sectional design, we evaluated 1,020 high school students (340 with SEN and 680 with TD) in the 9th grade (13-19 years old, M = 14.8; SD = 0.89). Teacher-student relationships, peer support at school, and family support for learning were assessed via subscales from the Student Engagement Inventory (SEI), opportunities to participate at school were measured with a subscale of the School Participation Questionnaire (SP), whereas engagement and disengagement were measured using the Multidimensional Scale of School Engagement (MSSE). Results show significant statistical differences between SEN and TD students in both student engagement and disengagement indicators. Engagement of SEN students is higher in the cognitive, emotional, and social dimensions than that of TD students. However, they also have higher disengagement in the cognitive and behavioral dimensions. Furthermore, SEN students rate their relationships with teachers more highly and perceive more opportunities for school participation than their peers. Further analyses show that teacher-student relationships are positively associated with all dimensions of student engagement and inversely with behavioral and cognitive disengagement. Although correlational, the findings suggest teacher-student relationships and school participation opportunities could be important variables for diminishing disengagement and its negative consequences for both SEN and TD students, while improving student engagement. We discuss these results considering possible implications for educational policies, practices, and research.

Dynamics of Simultaneous and Imitative Bodily Coordination in Trust and Distrust.

Body synchronization between interacting people involves coordinative movements in time, space and form. The introduction of newer technologies for automated video analysis and motion tracking has considerably improved the accurate measurement of coordination, particularly in temporal and spatial terms. However, the form of interpersonal coordination has been less explored. In the present study we address this gap by exploring the effect of trust on temporal and morphological patterns of interpersonal coordination. We adapted an optical motion-capture system to record spontaneous body movements in pairs of individuals engaged in natural conversations. We conducted two experiments in which we manipulated trust through a breach of expectancy (Study 1: 10 trustful and 10 distrustful participants) and friendship (Study 2: 20 dyads of friends and 20 dyads of strangers). In Study 1, results show the participants' strong, early mirror-like coordination in response to the confederates' breach of trust. In Study 2, imitative coordination tended to be more pronounced in pairs of friends than in pairs of non-friends. Overall, our results show not only that listeners move in reaction to speakers, but also that speakers react to listeners with a chain of dynamic coordination patterns affected by the immediate disposition of, and long-term relationship with, their interlocutors.