ABSTRACT

This chapter demonstrates how social interaction gives rise to phenomena that are not present in the typical experimental set-ups where individuals respond to and synchronize with computer stimuli. The most important of these is mutual adaptation, the continuous adjustment of behavior that occurs in interaction. The chapter describes empirical studies that have explored mutual adaptation. It indicates that entrainment is the process and synchronization its outcome. The chapter reviews the situations where two or more agents mutually adapt to each other as entrainment, and use synchronization where this communication is not bi-directional. A good contextualization of the role and function of entrainment in human sociality is Gallese's shared manifold model. The model illustrates how the experience of shared understanding, or empathy, is reached through interpersonal mechanisms, such as emotional contagion and entrainment, which in turn are based on intrapersonal neural, cognitive, and motor mechanisms facilitating these interpersonal processes.