Author:

Keywords:

Social Sciences, Psychology, Mathematical, Psychology, Experimental, Psychology, social interaction, ecological validity, social contingency detection, virtual paradigm, adolescence, MIND, CONTINGENCY, COGNITION, EXPLICIT, BRAIN, Adolescent, Adult, Child, Humans, Prospective Studies, Social Behavior, Social Interaction, Young Adult, C14/19/054#55213456, 0801 Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing, 1701 Psychology, 1702 Cognitive Sciences, Experimental Psychology, 4905 Statistics, 5202 Biological psychology, 5204 Cognitive and computational psychology

Abstract:

The study of real-time social interaction provides ecologically valid insight into social behavior. The objective of the current research is to experimentally assess real-time social contingency detection in an adolescent population, using a shortened version of the Perceptual Crossing Experiment (PCE). Pairs of 148 adolescents aged between 12 and 19 were instructed to find each other in a virtual environment interspersed with other objects by interacting with each other using tactile feedback only. Across six rounds, participants demonstrated increasing accuracy in social contingency detection, which was associated with increasing subjective experience of the mutual interaction. Subjective experience was highest in rounds when both participants were simultaneously accurate in detecting each other’s presence. The six-round version yielded comparable social contingency detection outcome measures to a ten-round version of the task. The shortened six-round version of the PCE has therefore enabled us to extend the previous findings on social contingency detection in adults to an adolescent population, enabling implementation in prospective research designs to assess the development of social contingency detection over time.