Abstract
This work investigates the socio-motor improvisation that occurs between two people. Improvisation capacities rely on our ability to interact with others by adapting our own behavioral answers to those of the other. Two parameters display these capacities: motor creativity (i.e., the richness of our movements) and interpersonal coordination. Although these two parameters are fundamental in the success of social interaction, they were never investigated jointly. This was the goal of our thesis. We aimed to explore intra- and interpersonal motor behaviors during improvisation. To do so, (i) we reviewed existing methods analyzing creativity and coordination, and proposed new ones, (ii) we measured improvisation capacities and their possible acquisition, (iii) we evaluated the influence of improvisation on postural organization of each person and (iv) we assessed the ability to improvise in presence of social deficits (associated with schizophrenia). Taken together, our results demonstrate that socio-motor improvisation is a good candidate to capture our social interactions. More precisely, we show that such capacities could discriminate healthy people from patients suffering from social deficits. Interpersonal coordination seems fundamental since it improves improvisation capacities and postural stability during social interaction. These results are discussed in the conceptual framework of the dynamical approach to movement coordination. We propose a simplified model of socio-motor improvisation including creativity and coordination. Finally, our conclusions offer new perspectives for the understanding and the improvement of social interactions, in presence or not of social disorders.