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Directly assessing interpersonal RSA influences in the frequency domain: An illustration with generalized partial directed coherence
Author(s) -
Liu Siwei,
Gates Kathleen M.,
Blandon Alysia Y.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/psyp.13054
Subject(s) - interpersonal communication , psychology , coherence (philosophical gambling strategy) , statistic , interpersonal relationship , social psychology , multivariate statistics , research domain criteria , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , statistics , clinical psychology , mathematics , psychopathology
Despite recent research indicating that interpersonal linkage in physiology is a common phenomenon during social interactions, and the well‐established role of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) in socially facilitative physiological regulation, little research has directly examined interpersonal influences in RSA, perhaps due to methodological challenges in analyzing multivariate RSA data. In this article, we aim to bridge this methodological gap by introducing a new method for quantifying interpersonal RSA influences. Specifically, we show that a frequency‐domain statistic, generalized partial directed coherence (gPDC), can be used to capture lagged relations in RSA between social partners without first estimating RSA for each person. We illustrate its utility by examining the relation between gPDC and marital conflict in a sample of married couples. Finally, we discuss how gPDC complements existing methods in the time domain and provide guidelines for choosing among these different statistical techniques.