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Main Authors: Lee, Andrew Jun, Miao, Grace Qiyuan, Dale, Rick, Galati, Alexia, Lu, Hongjing
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.08811
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author Lee, Andrew Jun
Miao, Grace Qiyuan
Dale, Rick
Galati, Alexia
Lu, Hongjing
author_facet Lee, Andrew Jun
Miao, Grace Qiyuan
Dale, Rick
Galati, Alexia
Lu, Hongjing
contents Successful teamwork depends on interpersonal dynamics, the ways in which individuals coordinate, influence, and adapt to one another over time. Existing measures of interpersonal dynamics, such as CRQA, correlation, Granger causality, and transfer entropy, typically capture only a single dimension: either the synchrony/coordination or the direction of influence between individuals. What is missing is a psychologically meaningful representation that unifies these dimensions and varies systematically with behavior. We propose the "context matrix" as one such representation. The context matrix, modeled within a linear dynamical system, has psychologically interpretable entries specifying how much each individual's current behavior is attributable to their own versus every other group member's past behaviors. Critically, these entries can be distilled into summary features that represent synchrony and directional influence. Evidence for the context matrix as psychologically meaningful is provided in two steps. First, we develop a sequential Bayesian model that infers context matrices from timeseries data and show that it accurately recovers them in noisy simulations. Second, applying the model to human eyetracking data, we demonstrate that summary features of the inferred context matrices capture expected task-based differences in interpersonal dynamics (or lack thereof), predict task accuracy in psychologically reasonable ways, and show some correspondence with existing measures (CRQA and Granger causality). We conclude by situating the context matrix within a broader agenda for modeling interpersonal dynamics in joint action.
format Preprint
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institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
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spellingShingle A Bayesian Dynamical System Model of Joint Action and Interpersonal Coordination
Lee, Andrew Jun
Miao, Grace Qiyuan
Dale, Rick
Galati, Alexia
Lu, Hongjing
Multiagent Systems
Successful teamwork depends on interpersonal dynamics, the ways in which individuals coordinate, influence, and adapt to one another over time. Existing measures of interpersonal dynamics, such as CRQA, correlation, Granger causality, and transfer entropy, typically capture only a single dimension: either the synchrony/coordination or the direction of influence between individuals. What is missing is a psychologically meaningful representation that unifies these dimensions and varies systematically with behavior. We propose the "context matrix" as one such representation. The context matrix, modeled within a linear dynamical system, has psychologically interpretable entries specifying how much each individual's current behavior is attributable to their own versus every other group member's past behaviors. Critically, these entries can be distilled into summary features that represent synchrony and directional influence. Evidence for the context matrix as psychologically meaningful is provided in two steps. First, we develop a sequential Bayesian model that infers context matrices from timeseries data and show that it accurately recovers them in noisy simulations. Second, applying the model to human eyetracking data, we demonstrate that summary features of the inferred context matrices capture expected task-based differences in interpersonal dynamics (or lack thereof), predict task accuracy in psychologically reasonable ways, and show some correspondence with existing measures (CRQA and Granger causality). We conclude by situating the context matrix within a broader agenda for modeling interpersonal dynamics in joint action.
title A Bayesian Dynamical System Model of Joint Action and Interpersonal Coordination
topic Multiagent Systems
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.08811