Riccardo Fusaroli

Hej everyone, I am currently holding a joint postdoctoral position at Aarhus University, shared between two projects: - Joint Diagrammatical Reasoning in language, at the Center for Semiotics, investigating linguistic dynamics and symbolic evolution in cooperative problem solving experimental tasks. - Digging for the roots of understanding, at the Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience investigating the role of material objects (e.g. Lego) in the co-construction of common ground. The common ground of these projects is that I manipulate the conditions at which dyads and groups interact in solving problems (mostly in quasi-ecological settings). I then quantify different properties of the coordination (heart rate synchronization, prosodic patterning, turn-taking rhythms, linguistic alignment, coordinative social strategies, etc), trying to predict performance and, in one paradigm, the neural traces (fMRI) of the coordination. I recently started a new clinical project trying to automatically classify different populations (schizophrenia, asperger's, depression, etc.) from the dynamics in their prosody.

I am mostly interested in new ways to quantify and model human interactions at their different coordinative levels, from physiological synchronization to the ones involving the symbolic and material aspects of language and objects. I bring expertise in human interactions, as well as in collecting experimentally constrained empirical data involving them. I am looking forward to learn and discuss different methods to analyze coordination, especially in groups with more than 2 interacting agents. I would also love to learn how to simulate my empirical data, so to constrain the space of possible parameters involved, and to investigate the cultural evolution of coordinative patterns.

Looking forward to the school and to the social dynamics there :-)