THE ROLE OF INTERPERSONAL SYNCHRONY IN NATURAL COMMUNICATION

Abstract

When speaking to one another, what is unconsciously occurring that leads to mutual understanding, empathy, memory, and language comprehension? We researched the role of interpersonal synchrony and brain synchrony during communication and analyzed data from a previous study in which participants listened to storytellers producing unrehearsed, happy and sad stories. ERP and skin conductance levels were measured from the speakers while they told their stories as well as from the listeners who then listened to recordings of the stories. After hearing each story, listeners looked at sequences of faces morphing from sad to happy and happy to sad. Listeners were asked to indicate when they noticed a change in emotion on the faces. Participants used the Brief Mood Inventory to rate their current mood and used the Multi-Dimensional Emotional Empathy Scale to indicate empathy after hearing the stories. They also wrote down each story heard from the best of their memory. We found that there was a positive correlation between degree of synchrony, empathy scores, and memory scores for the happy story task, as well as a positive correlation between synchrony and empathy scores and a negative correlation between synchrony and memory scores for the sad story task. The findings from this research further our understanding of brain synchrony between a speaker and listener and its effects on mood, empathy, and memory encoding.