Modeling Embedded Interpersonal and Multiagent Coordination

Interpersonal or multiagent coordination is a common part of everyday human activity. Identifying the dynamic processes that shape and constrain the complex, time-evolving patterns of multiagent behavioral coordination often requires the development of dynamical models to test hypotheses and motivate future research questions. Here we review a task dynamic framework for modeling multiagent behavior and illustrate the application of this framework using two examples. With an emphasis on synergistic selforganization, we demonstrate how the behavioral coordination that characterizes many social activities emerges naturally from the physical, informational, and biomechanical constraints and couplings that exist between two or more environmentally embedded and mutually responsive individuals.