Search

When interacting with someone, we tend to mimic their emotional expressions. This phenomenon is called emotional mimicry and is defined as the imitation of the counterpart’s emotional display (Hess & Fischer, 2013, 2014). Emotional mimicry is socially beneficial through increased liking, empathy, and social interaction quality (Hess & Fischer, 2022; Mauersberger & Hess, 2019). However, emotional mimicry is moderated by social factors such as group membership, similarity, or liking which can further impact social interaction (Bourgeois & Hess, 2008; Hess et al., 2022; McIntosh, 2006). To our knowledge, no study tested the influence of stigmatization of mental health diagnoses on emotional mimicry. According to Link and Phelan (2001), stigma is the convergence of four components: (1) labeling human differences, (2) associating the label with negative stereotypes, (3) separating the ones labeled from others, and (4) status loss and discrimination against the ones labeled. Studies demonstrated that individuals with mental health diagnoses are strongly stigmatized leading to increase public fear and desire for limited social interaction (Angermeyer & Matschinger, 2003; Link et al., 1999). This decreased willingness for social interaction could impact healthy subjects’ tendency to mimic stigmatized individuals’ emotional expressions as emotional mimicry is dependent on a desire for affiliation (Hess & Fischer, 2022). In this study, we aim to test whether putting a stigmatizing label on someone in the domain of mental health diagnoses influences emotional mimicry toward this person. We are also interested in measuring liking and interpersonal closeness as studies demonstrated that these variables mediate the influence of social factors on emotional mimicry (Kastendieck et al., 2020; Peng et al., 2021). We decided to focus our study on schizophrenia (SCZ) because it is one of the most stigmatized mental health diagnoses (Wood et al., 2014). Additionally, social interaction deficits represent a core diagnostic feature of schizophrenia as outlined in the DSM-IV. Hence, diminished emotional mimicry toward people with schizophrenia could worsen the social exclusion of patients. Our work aims to highlight a potential line of work to conduct on healthy subjects, rather than on patients, to alleviate the social exclusion of people with schizophrenia. Consequently, we will also conduct exploratory analyses to investigate if overall knowledge of schizophrenia, and explicit stigma of schizophrenia moderate the relationship between the stigma labeling and emotional mimicry. We will use an online procedure composed of the four experimental conditions corresponding to four labels (schizophrenia, diabetes, healthy, and a negative adjective). Each condition is needed to discern whether participants' response to the SCZ label is influenced by stigma, a specific diagnosis, or a negative label. The negative adjectives were chosen as they were rated similarly as determined by K-means cluster analysis to the schizophrenia label on a 10-point valence scale by 30 participants in a pretest [mean SCZ=3.03 (SD=1.79); mean lazy=2.80 (SD=1.65); mean hot tempered=3.17(SD=1.70); mean intolerant=2.9(SD=1.56)]. The labels will describe actors displaying happiness or sadness in short video clips. The stimuli were taken from The Amsterdam dynamic facial expression set (ADFES, van der Schalk et al., 2011). We will measure four dependent variables: emotional mimicry of sadness, emotional mimicry of happiness, perceived interpersonal closeness, and liking. For emotional mimicry, participants’ faces will be recorded with their computer’s webcam while watching the emotional stimuli. The videos of participants’ faces will then be analyzed with OpenFace 2.2 (Baltrusaitis et al., 2018) to obtain facial action unit activation and compute a happiness and sadness mimicry score after a baseline correction and within-subjects z-standardization (Hess et al., 1991; Hess et al., 2017; Kastendieck et al., 2021). For perceived interpersonal closeness, we will use an adapted slider scale version of the Inclusion of Other in the Self scale (IOS, Aron et al., 1992). For liking, we will ask participants to rate how much they liked the person on the video on a 100-slider scale. To ensure that participants stay focused on the video and do not guess our hypotheses, we use a cover story that deals with antidepressants. Hence, participants will also have to answer whether they believe the person on the video is taking antidepressants or not and whether this person should start or stop treatment with antidepressants. In addition, studies demonstrated that emotional recognition tasks enhance emotional mimicry (Murata et al., 2016). Results of the emotional recognition task also allow us to verify that participants perceived the stimuli correctly. Consequently, after every stimulus presentation, the two dependent variables from the rating domain (IOS and liking), the emotion recognition task, and the cover story questions will be asked. Finally, at the end of the experiment, participants will answer the Knowledge About Schizophrenia Test (KAST, Compton et al., 2007) to measure their overall knowledge of schizophrenia and the Social Distance Scale (Link et al., 1987) to explicitly test their level of stigmatization toward individuals with schizophrenia.

International audience

L'acceptabilit�� et l���efficacit�� des Interactions Humain-Robot (IHR) ou des Interfaces Humain-Machine (IHM) au sens large, sont deux questions centrales. Les difficult��s que peuvent avoir les syst��mes informatiques complexes �� s���adapter au monde humain et �� interagir avec lui d'une mani��re qui ��mule le travail collaboratif humain-humain posent la question de la compr��hension et de la ma��trise de l'��volution d'IHM ou d���IHR intuitives, agr��ables et efficaces. Travailler sur les caract��ristiques techniques de l'IHM (la conception de leur apparence, les traits de comportement superficiels etc.) peut contribuer �� certaines solutions partielles pour des interactions ponctuelles ou �� court terme. Malgr�� des progr��s notables, les IHM restent �� ce jour peu intuitives. La question de l����� intuitivit�� �� des IHM est donc une probl��matique difficile. L'impact de la charge cognitive induite par une IHM peut provoquer d'importants d��ficits d'efficacit��, voire l'arr��t de l���interaction. Dans le cadre, par exemple, des IHR, cette question peut ��tre abord��e au travers de divers aspects, on peut citer de mani��re non-exhaustive : la communication verbale, les communications non-verbales (expressions faciles, postures, gestes co-verbaux etc.), la morphologie, la s��curit�� ou encore l�����thique.

L'acceptabilité et l’efficacité des Interactions Humain-Robot (IHR) ou des Interfaces Humain-Machine (IHM) au sens large, sont deux questions centrales. Les difficultés que peuvent avoir les systèmes informatiques complexes à s’adapter au monde humain et à interagir avec lui d'une manière qui émule le travail collaboratif humain-humain posent la question de la compréhension et de la maîtrise de l'évolution d'IHM ou d’IHR intuitives, agréables et efficaces. Travailler sur les caractéristiques techniques de l'IHM (la conception de leur apparence, les traits de comportement superficiels etc.) peut contribuer à certaines solutions partielles pour des interactions ponctuelles ou à court terme. Malgré des progrès notables, les IHM restent à ce jour peu intuitives. La question de l’« intuitivité » des IHM est donc une problématique difficile. L'impact de la charge cognitive induite par une IHM peut provoquer d'importants déficits d'efficacité, voire l'arrêt de l’interaction. Dans le cadre, par exemple, des IHR, cette question peut être abordée au travers de divers aspects, on peut citer de manière non-exhaustive : la communication verbale, les communications non-verbales (expressions faciles, postures, gestes co-verbaux etc.), la morphologie, la sécurité ou encore l’éthique.

International audience; L'objectif de cette étude est d'analyser la coordination interpersonnelle chez les patients schizophrènes (SZ) en utilisant un robot humanoïde contrôlé par un modèle neuronal entraîné par le mouvement humain et capable de se synchroniser sur ce dernier. L'utilisation d'un robot présente l'avantage de pouvoir être modifié et contrôlé sans être influencé par les patients comme le serait un humain. Plus spécifiquement, nous nous sommes intéressés aux coordinations non-intentionnelles qui sont, d'après la littérature, préservées chez les SZ. Nous avons réalisé une expérience dans laquelle il a été demandé aux patients et aux sujets contrôles, d'exécuter des mouvements de fitness conjointement avec le robot qui était soit synchronisé de façon bidirectionnelle aux sujets soit à fréquence fixe (uni-directionnel). Nous montrons ainsi dans cette étude que les patients SZ présentent des difficultés à être stable à un rythme donné. De plus, nos résultats montrent que dans le cadre spécifique d'une interaction à la fréquence préférentielle des sujets, il y a peu de différence entre SZ et contrôles en terme de capacité de synchronisation (coordination interpersonnelle). Aussi, la meilleure synchronisation, la meilleure stabilité ainsi que la meilleure performance en termes de vitesse ont été obtenus avec la condition bidirectionnelle.

International audience; Human movement has been studied for decades, and dynamic laws of motion that are common to all humans have been derived. Yet, every individual moves differently from everyone else (faster/slower, harder/smoother, etc.). We propose here an index of such variability, namely an individual motor signature (IMS) able to capture the subtle differences in the way each of us moves. We show that the IMS of a person is time-invariant and that it significantly differs from those of other individuals. This allows us to quantify the dynamic similarity, a measure of rapport between dynamics of different individuals' movements, and demonstrate that it facilitates coordination during interaction. We use our measure to confirm a key prediction of the theory of similarity that coordination between two individuals performing a joint-action task is higher if their motions share similar dynamic features. Furthermore, we use a virtual avatar driven by an interactive cognitive architecture based on feedback control theory to explore the effects of different kinematic features of the avatar motion on coordination with human players.

International audience; Although existing studies indicate a positive effect of interpersonal motor coordination (IMC) on likability, no consensus has been reached as for the effect of likability back onto IMC. The present study specifically investigated the causal effect of likability on IMC and explored, by tracking the natural gaze direction, the possible underlying mechanisms. Twenty-two participants were engaged in an interpersonal finger-tapping task with a confederate in three likability conditions (baseline, likable, and unlikable), while wearing an eye tracker. They had to perform finger tapping at their comfort tempo with the confederate who tapped at the same or 1.5 times of the participant's preferred frequency. Results showed that when tapping at the same frequency, the effect of likability on IMC varied with time. Participants coordinated at a higher level in the baseline condition at the beginning of the coordination task, and a facilitative effect of likability on IMC was revealed in the last session. As a novelty, our results evidenced a positive correlation between IMC and the amount of gaze onto the coordination partner's movement only in the likable condition. No effect of likability was found when the confederate was tapping at 1.5 times of the participant's preferred frequency. Our research suggests that the psychosocial property of the coordinating partner should be taken into consideration when investigating the performance of IMC and that IMC is a parameter that is sensitive to multiple factors.

Between 1763 and 2013, Quebec is armed because the province is concerned by the security and defense issues in the North American area. The Quebec history is characterised by a series of military alliances, violent struggles, rebellion, resistance and transgressions. The Seven Years War, the American Revolution, the Franco-British war in 1793, the Patriotsrevolt in 1837-1838, the participation of French Canadians in the American Civil War, conscription crises in 1918 and 1942, the FLQ action, referendums on Quebec independence in 1980 and 1995 or the Quebec active participation in the war against terrorism from 2001 are some examples of these power relations for the studied period.The history of Quebec as a specific entity starts with the assignment by the King of France of the Canadian portion of the French Empire to the King of England with the Treaty of Paris of February 10th, 1763. Under the leadership of the Church Catholic, French-speaking canadians who live in the lowlands of the St. Lawrence, are organizing their resistance toBritish colonialism. Over the time, they develop their own strategic culture based on the idea of a need for the survival of the French fact in North America. Despite the attempts of England to assimilate the population of the colony to the English culture to better accept his authority, french canadians resist and organize their territorial defense in the lowlands of theSt. Lawrence. This resistance accelerates the emergence of a special relationship between Quebec and France wich is its former colonial power. The relations of the Belle Province with the North American States are structured by the specific strategic culture of french canadians.At the time of the 250th Treaty of Paris anniversary, in 2013, Quebec is a security and defense complex having reached a status of almost sovereign State. The province has a homogeneous population, a territory and a lawfull government. Quebec has the largest diplomatic representations network abroad all federal states in the world. The province alsohas its own police force, an intelligence service or a war industry. Quebec has international influence out of proportion to its demographic weight.; Entre 1763 et 2013, le Québec est armes car il se retrouve entraîné au coeur des questions de sécurité et de défense qui agitent l’espace nord-américain. L’histoire de la Belle province est marquée par une série d’alliances militaires, de luttes violentes, de rébellions, de résistances et de transgressions. La guerre de Sept ans, la révolution américaine, la guerrefranco-britannique en 1793, la révolte des Patriotes en 1837-1838, la participation des Canadiens francophones à la guerre de Sécession, les crises de la conscription en 1918 et en 1942, l’action du FLQ, les référendums sur l’indépendance du Québec en 1980 et 1995 ou encore la participation active du Québec à la guerre contre le terrorisme à partir de 2001constituent quelques exemples de ces rapports de force au cours de la période étudiée.L’histoire du Québec en tant qu’entité spécifique démarre avec la cession par le roi de France de la partie canadienne de l’empire français au roi d’Angleterre avec le traité de Paris du 10 février 1763. Sous la houlette de l’Église catholique, les Canadiens francophones, qui vivent dans les basses terres du Saint-Laurent, organisent leur résistance face au colonialisme britannique. Ils développent au fil du temps leur propre culture stratégique fondée sur l’idée d’une nécessité de la survivance du fait francophone en Amérique du Nord. Malgré les tentatives de l’Angleterre d’assimiler la population de la colonie à la culture anglophone afin de mieux faire accepter son autorité, les francophones résistent et organisent leur défense territoriale dans les basses terres du Saint-Laurent. Cette résistance accélère l’émergence d’une relation spéciale entre le Québec et la France qui constitue son ancienne métropole coloniale. Les relations de la Belle Province avec les États d’Amérique du Nord sont conditionnées par cette culture stratégique spécifique des francophones.Au moment du 250e anniversaire du traité de Paris, en 2013, le Québec forme un complexe de sécurité et de défense ayant atteint un statut de quasi-État souverain. Il a une population homogène, un territoire et un gouvernement propre. Il possède le plus important réseau de représentations diplomatiques à l’étranger de tous les États fédérés dans le monde. Il dispose également d’une force de police, d’un service de renseignement ou encore d’une industrie de guerre. Le Québec exerce une influence internationale hors de proportion avec son poids démographique.

International audience; Joint-improvisation is not only an open-ended creative action that two or more people perform together in the context of an artistic performance (e.g., theatre, music or dance). Joint-improvisation also takes place in daily life activities when humans take part in collective performance such as toddlers at play or adults engaged in a conversation. In the context of this article, joint-improvisation has been looked at from a social motor coordination perspective. In the literature, the nature of the social motor coordination characteristics of joint-improvisation for either the creative aspect or daily life features of this motor performance remains unclear. Additionally, both solo-improvisation and joint-improvisation need to be studied conjointly to establish the influence of the social element of improvisation in the emergence of multi-agent motor coordination. In order to better understand those two types of improvisation, we compared three level of expertise - novice, intermediate and professional in dance improvisation to identify movement characteristics for each of the groups. Pairs of the same level were asked to improvise together. Each individual was also asked to perform an improvisation on his/her own. We found that each of the three groups present specific movement organization with movement complexity increasing with the level of expertise. Experts performed shorter movement duration in conjunction with an increase range of movement. The direct comparison of individual and paired Conditions highlighted that the joint-improvisation reduced the complexity of the movement organization and those for all three levels while maintaining the differences between the groups. This direct comparison amongst those three distinct groups provides an original insight onto the nature of movement patterns in joint-improvisation situation. Overall, it reveals the role of both individual and collective properties in the emergence of social coordination.

Resume Il est actuellement admis que les symptomes negatifs apparaissent precocement dans la maladie schizophrenique et seraient plus predictifs du fonctionnement futur des patients que les symptomes positifs [16] . L’apathie, symptome transnosographique puisqu’on le retrouve dans un ensemble de maladies neurologiques [14] , fait partie des symptomes negatifs frequemment rencontres dans la schizophrenie et s’avere constituer un handicap majeur pour le retablissement des individus qui en souffrent [19] . Cependant, si les traitements medicamenteux (neuroleptiques de premiere et seconde generations) ont fait la preuve de leur efficacite sur les symptomes positifs, ils n’ont montre que peu d’effets sur les symptomes negatifs et particulierement dans l’apathie pouvant meme parfois, du fait de leurs effets secondaires l’aggraver [40] . Longtemps consideree en clinique comme la perte de la volonte, des avancees recentes issues de la neuropsychologie cognitive et des donnees en neuro-imagerie ont abouti a des definitions plus strictes et des approches necessairement multidimensionnelle de l’apathie. L’apathie peut actuellement se definir comme une reduction quantitative et donc observable de comportements volontaires orientes vers un ou plusieurs buts [13] . Neanmoins a notre connaissance, ces differents modeles n’ont jamais ete mis a l’epreuve dans la maladie schizophrenique. Cet article a pour objectif de passer en revue les avancees scientifiques recentes portant sur l’apathie. Puis dans un second temps, d’explorer si les approches multidimensionnelles actuelles peuvent s’appliquer a la complexite psychopathologique decrite sous le terme d’apathie dans cette pathologie schizophrenique.

International audience; The control of standing body posture is affected by mechanical perturbations, such as motion of the support surface. Postural activity also is responsive to subtle social factors: When 2 people interact there is spontaneous interpersonal coordination of their movements. We asked whether interpersonal postural coordination based on visual contact would be robust in the presence of mechanical perturbations that characterize sea travel. During an ocean voyage, pairs of participants stood facing together or facing apart. Interpersonal coordination of body sway was stronger when participants faced each other than when they faced apart. Furthermore, overall body movement was reduced when individuals faced together, suggesting that the sight of another person improved individuals' ability to compensate for ship motion. These findings provide the first evidence that the "soft" constraint of interpersonal visual contact can influence interpersonal postural coordination as people simultaneously adjust postural sway in response to powerful mechanical (i.e., "hard") constraints.

Introduction Social interactions dysfunctions make up core symptoms of many mental disorders and have been extensively studied through cognitive paradigms gathered under the concept of social cognition. Nevertheless, a growing body of literature have demonstrated that motor coordination is an important feature of these human social interactions but has been little studied in the context of mental diseases. Objective In this study, we propose to compare the processes of inter-agent coordination in healthy and socially impaired clinical populations (e.g. schizophrenia and social phobia patients). Method 20 schizophrenia and 20 social phobia patients were compared to 20 healthy subjects using an hand-held pendulum paradigm in intentional and unintentional interpersonal motor coordination, with different leadership conditions. All participants had psychopathological and neuropsychological evaluations. Results Our results demonstrated that each group of subject was characterised by specific signature concerning interpersonal motor coordination. More specifically, instability of the coordination and temporal delay between patient and controls revealed that schizophrenia impaired intentional coordination but not spontaneous non-intentional coordination whereas social phobia only affected leader conditions. Conclusion Taken altogether, these preliminary results give evidence that motor control through motor coordination behaviours is a fundamental part of social interactions deficits in schizophrenia and social phobia. These results lead us to examine if the evaluation of motor coordination during a social interactions could help to discriminate the deficits in social interactions and to propose specific therapy for their rehabilitation. Acknowledgements This research was supported by an Agence Nationale de la Recherche grant (Project SCAD # ANR-09- BLAN-0405-03).

International audience; Here, we propose that bidirectionality in implicit motor coordination between humanoid robots and humans could enhance the social competence of human–robot interactions. We first detail some questions pertaining to human–robot interactions, introducing the Uncanny Valley hypothesis. After introducing a framework pertinent for the understanding of natural social interactions, motor resonance, we examine two behaviors derived from this framework: motor coordination, investigated in and informative about human–human interaction, and motor interference, which demonstrate the relevance of the motor resonance framework to describe human perception of humanoid robots. These two lines of investigation are then put together to “close the loop” by proposing to implement a key feature of motor coordination, bidirectionality, in robots’ behavior. Finally, we discuss the feasibility of implementing motor coordination between humanoid robots and humans, and the consequences of this implementation in enhancing the social competence of robots interacting with humans.

International audience; The authors present a practical guide for studying nonstationary data on human motor behavior in a time-frequency representation. They explain the limits of classical methods founded exclusively on the time or frequency basis and then answer those limits with the windowed Fourier transform and the wavelet transform (WT) methods, both of which are founded on time-frequency bases. The authors stress an interest in the WT method because it permits access to the whole complexity of a signal (in terms of time, frequency, amplitude, and phase). They then show that the WT method is well suited for the analysis of the interaction between two signals, particularly in human movement studies. Finally, to demonstrate its practical applications, the authors apply the method to real data.

International audience; Although robots can contribute to the understanding of biological behavior, they fail to model the processes by which humans cope with their environment. Both development and learning are characterized by complex relationships that require constant modification. Given present technology, robots can only model behaviors in specific situations and during discrete stages. Robots cannot master the complex relationships that are the hallmark of human behavior.

International audience

International audience

Rapid progress in the area of humanoid robots offers tremendous possibilities for investigating and improving social competences in people with social deficits, but remains yet unexplored in schizophrenia. In this study, we examined the influence of social feedbacks elicited by a humanoid robot on motor coordination during a human-robot interaction. Twenty-two schizophrenia patients and twenty-two matched healthy controls underwent a collaborative motor synchrony task with the iCub humanoid robot. Results revealed that positive social feedback had a facilitatory effect on motor coordination in the control participants compared to non-social positive feedback. This facilitatory effect was not present in schizophrenia patients, whose social-motor coordination was similarly impaired in social and non-social feedback conditions. Furthermore, patients’ cognitive flexibility impairment and antipsychotic dosing were negatively correlated with patients’ ability to synchronize hand movements with iCub. Overall, our findings reveal that patients have marked difficulties to exploit facial social cues elicited by a humanoid robot to modulate their motor coordination during human-robot interaction, partly accounted for by cognitive deficits and medication. This study opens new perspectives for comprehension of social deficits in this mental disorder.

Schizophrenia patients are known to be impaired in their ability to process social information and to engage in social interactions. To understand better social cognition in schizophrenia, we investigate the links between these impairments. In this paper, we focus primarily on the influence of social feedback, such as facial emotions, on motor coordination during joint action. To investigate and quantify this influence, we exploited systematically-controlled social and nonsocial feedback provided by a humanoid robot. Humanoid robotics technology offers interactive designs and can precisely control the properties of the feedback provided during the interaction. In this work, a joint-action task with a robot is performed to investigate how social cognition is affected by cognitive capabilities and symptomatology. Results show that positive social feedback has a facilitatory effect on social-motor coordination in the control participants compared to nonsocial positive feedback. This facilitation effect is not present in schizophrenia patients, whose social-motor coordination is similar in social and nonsocial feedback conditions. This result is strongly correlated with performances in the Trail Making Test (TMT), which highlights the link between cognitive deficits and social-motor coordination in schizophrenia.

We present novel, low-cost and non-invasive potential diagnostic biomarkers of schizophrenia. They are based on the ‘mirror-game’, a coordination task in which two partners are asked to mimic each other’s hand movements. In particular, we use the patient’s solo movement, recorded in the absence of a partner, and motion recorded during interaction with an artificial agent, a computer avatar or a humanoid robot. In order to discriminate between the patients and controls, we employ statistical learning techniques, which we apply to nonverbal synchrony and neuromotor features derived from the participants’ movement data. The proposed classifier has 93% accuracy and 100% specificity. Our results provide evidence that statistical learning techniques, nonverbal movement coordination and neuromotor characteristics could form the foundation of decision support tools aiding clinicians in cases of diagnostic uncertainty., Mirror game test could detect schizophrenia A new test of movement and social interaction could detect markers of schizophrenia, and help to diagnose and manage the condition. In an effort to establish reliable indicators of schizophrenia, Piotr Slowinski at the University of Exeter, UK and colleagues developed a test that could detect deficits in movement and social interactions, both characteristics of the disorder. They asked people to perform movements alone, and to mirror the movements of a computer avatar or a humanoid robot. Automated analysis of the movements allowed to distinguish people with schizophrenia from healthy participants with accuracy and specificity slightly better than clinical interviews and comparable to test based on much more expensive neuroimaging methods. The technique could help with diagnosis of schizophrenia and to monitor patients’ responses to treatment, but needs to be tested in clinical trials before being applied in clincal practice.

International audience

International audience; Standing subjects were asked to track the fore-aft motion of a target with their heads. Three support surface conditions (standard, foam, rollers) were crossed with three amplitudes of target motion. The relative phase between angular motion of ankles and hips was analyzed. Two preferred patterns emerged; close to in-phase (phase relative ≈ 0°), and close to anti-phase (phase relative ≈ 180°). On the solid surface increasing target amplitude produced a change from in-phase to anti-phase coordination. There were no amplitude-related changes in hip-ankle relative phase on the rollers where only in-phase coordination was observed, or the foam (only anti-phase coordination). We conclude 1) that hip-ankle relative phase is useful for describing postural coordination, 2) that 0° and 180° are two spontaneous coordination modes in the hip-ankle postural space, and 3) that these modes emerge deferentially under the mutual pressures of task and support surface properties