Methods for the Analysis of Parallel Streams of Continuously Recorded Social Behaviors

William Gardner, William A. Griffin

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

20 Scopus citations

Abstract

Presents a strategy for analyzing social interactive behaviors occurring simultaneously in parallel streams. The standard strategy for representing such data has been interval coding. Interval coding converts the behavioral stream into a sequence of codes representing the behaviors observed in equal length intervals. This strategy is problematic because statistics calculated from interval coded data depend on the arbritrary choice of interval length. An alternative strategy is to represent the behavioral stream in a continuous-time format, using both the sequence of behaviors and their durations. A continuous-time model for social interactive data was applied to observations of mutual gaze between a husband and wife. The analysis uncovered different distributions of event durations in the two partners: The wife looked primarily at the husband and responded sensitively to his gaze behavior, whereas the husband looked primarily away, unresponsive to the wife.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)446-455
Number of pages10
JournalPsychological bulletin
Volume105
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - May 1989
Externally publishedYes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Psychology

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