Evasion Or Enhancing Connection In Prof. Chaspari's Article

Summary

In this paper, the author Prof. Chaspari and her colleagues have tried to establish a cognitive synchrony among the partners romantically involved by capturing the co-occurrence of electrodermal activity (EDA). Here the ‘Evasion or enhancing connection’ and ‘Disquietude or avoiding connection’ results are computed for the analysis. Several studies by life science researchers have tried to establish the cognitive pattern existing among therapist and the patient; parent and the child; romantic couples. However, the relation among the couples is of special research interest as the mood, behavior and interest of one partner not impacts his/her physical and psychogenic health, it also impacts their relationship.

Several time-series analysis and statistical approaches have been undertaken to study in this field. However, they fail to capture the fluctuation in human behavior and take into consideration only common interest among the partners. Hence, in this research the author has tried to address this issue by measuring the extent to which the original cognitive waves are similar.“Sparse EDA synchrony measures (SESM)” methodology has been proposed in this paper, which is computed on two datasets involving romantic couples. It evaluates the emotional intimacy and extent of relationship attachment.

Electrodermal activity (EDA) typically consists of tonic portion called SCL and phasic portion called SCR. These two waves are superimposed to study the cognitive parameters. For single SESM depiction, the EDA waves is portrayed as linear atoms. Distance metrics through sparse decomposition is mathematically performed to compute the similarity among the two waves. In case of Joint SESM depiction, two EDA from common atoms are portrayed jointly asymetricity is computed which denotes the extent to which one wave can be used as a representation of the other. Two datasets were collected from the couples visiting the labs. EDA waves were captured from them at 62.5 Hz using ‘Biopac’ system. The first data set was collected from young couples in 18-25 years age bracket whereas the second dataset was captured from the married couples aging among 21-47 years.

Several tasks like ‘Date Planning’, ‘Casual Conversation’ and other emotionally intensive activities were conducted with these couples during the study. The couples were then asked to fill up the questionnaire on ‘Attachment style’, in which the ‘Evasion’ and ‘Disquietude’ results for the partners were calculated. A machine learning algorithm and several cross validations were performed. Results depicted that the simple SESM scores did not vary significantly whereas the joint SESM scores displayed a significant variation in both the data sets across tasks. Further, Joint SESM was found to be a better method of determining the ‘Attachment style’. Consistent with earlier studies, it was also found that the ‘Disquietude’ factor was more closely associated to cognitive synchrony as compared to ‘Evasion’.

Critique

The paper has a very straightforward and plain-spoken approach written in a crisp language which makes it very comprehensible. The presentation of ideas and the analysis given were easy to follow and understand. The theoretical specifics mentioned by the authors are very insightful and help in complementing the elegance of the ideas formulated in the paper. The manner in which the approach takes into consideration two different data sets from two age groups: namely the young couples and the married couples and has conducted several activities in varying simulation environment has indeed made this study more relevant. Two different questionnaire- “AAQ or Adult Attachment Questionnaire” for married couples and “ECR-R or Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised” for young couples has indeed helped the study to seamlessly compute the “Attachment style” among the couples. However, being a just 6-page research paper has its own drawbacks too. Clearly, it becomes apparent to the reader that the paper being very crisp in its formulations, lacks the in-depth details, theories and conjectures that could have given the paper more substance.

Ideas for Follow

The approach and methodology for identifying cognitive synchrony among couples using two different kinds of data sets can undergo further probe and empirical and statistical analysis to broaden the field of cognitive analysis using signal processing and other statistical technique. The algorithms proposed, the theorems and the other metrics used in the research paper can be further probed to produce a base for future hypothesis and proposals of expanding the scope of study to include other cognitive waves like ECG. This model can be further explored in future to establish the impact of several relationships- dependent and other contextual factors on cognitive synchrony.