Intersubjectivity, Empathy and Nonverbal Interaction
Publisher
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Empathy is thought to involve cognitive processes that depend on the simulation of another's
experiences. Embodiment has a key role for empathy as vehicle for recreating the experience
of another. This thesis explores the validity of this claim by investigating what people do when
communicating about their experiences. In particular, what is the contribution of our embodied
resources such as gestures, postures and expressions to empathy and intersubjectivity?
These questions are explored against two corpora of dyadic interactions. One features conversations
of people describing recalled embodied experiences to each other, such as painful or pleasant
bodily experiences like a headache or laughing. The other features a series of interactions
designed to emulate informal conversations. The analysis uses hand coded gestures, feedback
and clari cation questions, body movement data and a new approach to quantifying posture
congruence. The analysis shows the embodied responses observed within these interactions are
intentionally placed and formulated to facilitate the incremental process of a conversation as
a joint activity. This is inconsistent with accounts that propose there is an automatic and
non-conscious propensity for people to mimic each other in social interactions.
Quantitative analysis show that patterns of gesture type and use, feedback form and posture
di er systematically between interlocutors. Additionally, results show that resources provided
by embodiment are allocated strategically. Nonverbal contributions increase in frequency and
adjust their form responding to problems in conversation such as during clari cation questions
and repair. Detailed qualitative analysis shows the instances that appear to display mimicry
within the interaction function rather as embodied adaptations or paraphrases. In their contrast
with the original contribution they demonstrate a speci c understanding of the type of
experience being conveyed. This work shows that embodiment is an important resource for intersubjectivity
and embodied communication is speci cally constructed to aid the collaborative,
sequential and intersubjective progression of dialogue.
Authors
Plant, Nicola JaneCollections
- Theses [4213]