Discovering Hidden Temporal Patterns in Behavior and Interaction

Discovering hidden recurring patterns in observable behavioral processes is an important issue frequently faced by numerous advanced students and researchers across many research areas, such as, for example, psychology, biology, sports, robotics, media, fi nance, and medicine. As generally, the many powerful methods included in statistical software packages were not developed for this kind of analysis, discovering such patterns has proven a particularly diffi cult task, due to a lack of (a) adequate formalized models of the kinds of patterns to look for, (b) corresponding detection algorithms, and (c) their implementation in available software. The research described in this book is based on the application of such pattern types, algorithms, and software developed over decades or since the late 1970s and until this day in the context of research in collaboration with human and animal behavioral research teams at internationally leading universities in the USA and Europe, thus testing the usefulness and validity of the pattern types, algorithms, and software in numerous research areas. With the (scale-independent statistical hierarchical and fractal-like) T-Pattern at its heart, a set of proposed pattern types, called the T-System, forms the basis for the search algorithms implemented as the software THEME (v 6), which is easily available in free educational and full commercial versions (copyright www.patternvision.com). Recent original additions to the T-System and Theme are the T-Burst, the T-Packet (with its gravity and repulsion zone), T-Associates, T-Satellites, and T-Taboos. As each chapter of this book describes a different research application of T-Pattern Detection and Analysis with THEME, it can be seen as a sequel to Anolli et al. eds. book The Hidden Structure of Interactions: From Neurons to Culture Patterns . Both books can also be seen as products of an international research network, called Methodology for the Analysis of Social Interaction (MASI), based on a formal international interuniversity collaboration convention between leading European universities, with Magnusson’s analytical model as the common reference, initiated in 1995 by the University of Paris V, René Descartes and fi rst signed by the rectors and presidents of seven universities, but now involves 24 universities in Europe and the Americas. Both books include a number of contributions from collaborators outside the MASI network, for example, in the area of human interaction at the University of Chicago in continuation of collaboration since the beginning of this R&D effort in the 1970s; moreover, the University of Arizona (deception in interactions, Burgoon et al.); the University of California, Irvine (psychiatry, Sandman et al.); the University of Palermo, Italy (behavior and brain research, Casarrubea et al.); and the University of Cambridge, UK (neuroscience; multi-cell interaction patterns in living brains, Nicol et al.). The chapters of this book provide advanced students and researchers highly varied models for their own research with easily available software tools (including free educational version) and should be a natural addition to university and research libraries. M. S. Magnusson - Reykjavik , Iceland J.K. Burgoon - Tucson , AZ , USA M. Casarrubea - Palermo , Ital