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Interactional synchrony: Genuine or spurious? A critique of recent research

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Abstract

In two recent articles, McDowall (1978a, 1978b) has challenged the micro-analytic work of W. S. Condon and Adam Kendon. Specifically, he has argued on the basis of his work that “interactional synchrony” is not a genuine phenomenon, but rather a statistically expectable “noise” in social interaction. In this paper, we demonstrate that McDowall's results are inconclusive because of confusion as to what constitutes interactional synchrony. We clarify these issues and place McDowall's experiments in their proper perspective.

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Gatewood, J.B., Rosenwein, R. Interactional synchrony: Genuine or spurious? A critique of recent research. J Nonverbal Behav 6, 12–29 (1981). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00987933

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