Perceptual Crossing Experiment and EEG
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Abstract
The study of dyadic social interaction has become an active field of research, yet many foundational questions regarding the mechanistic basis and potential role of interbodily and inter-brain synchrony remain. One methodological stumbling block has been the absence of a comprehensive, high-quality dataset in the public domain that could serve as a shared reference point for the field for the specific purpose of testing new hypotheses and methods. Here we provide such a dataset focused on embodied dyadic interaction, the ECSU-PCE Dataset, which includes sensorimotor variables and a range of physiological measurements: electroencephalogram (EEG), electrocardiogram (ECG), electrodermal activity (EDA), and respiration dynamics. Participants' subjective reports on their social experience and questionnaire-based personality traits are also included.
The data was acquired from a total of 32 pairs of participants involving 64 healthy able-bodied adults. Each pair completed 18 one-minute trials of a haptics-based social contingency detection task, known as the "perceptual crossing experiment" (PCE); the current study successfully replicated previous PCE findings. Three-minute resting state data was also recorded at four points in time: before the start of social interaction, and after trials 6, 12, and 18, i.e. after the end of their interaction. The ECSU-PCE dataset is expected to be of interest for researchers interested social interaction, embodied cognition, and the effects of online technological mediation.