We measured turn-taking in terms of hand and head movements and asked if the global rhythm of the participants’ body activity relates to word learning. Six dyads composed of parents and toddlers (M=18 months) interacted in a tabletop task wearing motion-tracking sensors on their hands and head. Parents were instructed to teach the labels of 10 novel objects and the child was later tested on a name-comprehension task. Using dynamic time warping, we compared the motion data of all body-part pairs, within and between partners. For every dyad, we also computed an overall measure of the quality of the interaction, that takes into consideration the state of interaction when the parent uttered an object label and the overall smoothness of the turn-taking. The overall interaction quality measure was correlated with the total number of words learned. In particular, head movements were inversely related to other partner's hand movements, and the degree of bodily coupling of parent and toddler predicted the words that children learned during the interaction. The implications of joint body dynamics to understanding joint coordination of activity in a social interaction, its scaffolding effect on the child's learning and its use in the development of artificial systems are discussed.

中文翻译：

---

幼儿单词学习中的社会协调：感知和行动的相互作用系统

我们根据手部和头部运动来测量轮换，并询问参与者身体活动的整体节奏是否与单词学习有关。由父母和蹒跚学步的孩子（M=18 个月）组成的六个二人组在一项桌面任务中进行互动，他们的手和头上都戴着运动跟踪传感器。父母被要求教 10 个新事物的标签，孩子后来接受了名称理解任务的测试。使用动态时间扭曲，我们比较了合作伙伴内部和合作伙伴之间所有身体部位对的运动数据。对于每个二元组，我们还计算了交互质量的整体度量，其中考虑了父母说出对象标签时的交互状态和轮换的整体平滑度。整体交互质量测量与学习的单词总数相关。特别是头部运动与其他伙伴的手部运动呈负相关，父母和幼儿的身体耦合程度预测了孩子在互动过程中学到的单词。讨论了关节体动力学对理解社会互动中活动的联合协调的影响、其对儿童学习的支架效应及其在人工系统开发中的应用。