Patterns of nonverbal and verbal behavior of interlocutors become more similar as communication progresses. Rhythm entrainment promotes prosocial behavior and signals social bonding and cooperation. Yet, it is unknown if the convergence of rhythm in human speech is perceived and is used to make pragmatic inferences regarding the cooperative urge of the interactors. We conducted two experiments to answer this question. For analytical purposes, we separate pulse (recurring acoustic events) and meter (hierarchical structuring of pulses based on their relative salience). We asked the listeners to make judgments on the hostile or collaborative attitude of interacting agents who exhibit different or similar pulse (Experiment 1) or meter (Experiment 2). The results suggest that rhythm convergence can be a marker of social cooperation at the level of pulse, but not at the level of meter. The mapping of rhythmic convergence onto social affiliation or opposition is important at the early stages of language acquisition. The evolutionary origin of this faculty is possibly the need to transmit and perceive coalition information in social groups of human ancestors. We suggest that this faculty could promote the emergence of the speech faculty in humans.

中文翻译：

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言语节奏收敛作为社会联盟信号。

随着沟通的进展，对话者的非语言和语言行为模式变得更加相似。节奏夹带促进亲社会行为并标志着社会联系与合作。然而，尚不清楚人类言语中节奏的收敛是否能够被感知并被用来对互动者的合作冲动做出务实的推论。我们进行了两个实验来回答这个问题。出于分析目的，我们将脉冲（重复出现的声学事件）和计量（基于相对显着性的脉冲分层结构）分开。我们要求听众对表现出不同或相似脉搏（实验 1）或仪表（实验 2）的交互主体的敌对或合作态度做出判断。结果表明，节奏趋同可以作为脉搏层面社会合作的标志，但在韵律层面则不然。在语言习得的早期阶段，将节奏趋同映射到社会归属或对立非常重要。这种能力的进化起源可能是人类祖先的社会群体中传递和感知联盟信息的需要。我们认为这种能力可以促进人类言语能力的出现。