Event Abstract Back to Event Examining Physiological Regulation in Dyadic Conversations and the Effect of Emotional Empathy Wenting Chen1*, Skye McDonald1 and Travis Wearne1 1 University of New South Wales, Australia Aims: The aim of this study was to investigate physiological regulation to conversational behaviours within a natural social interaction. This study also aimed to investigate emotional empathy as a moderator of this physiological responding. Method: Participants were asked to have a unrestricted thirty-minute conversation. Following this, videos of these conversations were coded for eight behavioural variables, namely, floor holding, listening, unfloored overlapping speech, unfloored silences, own smiling, other’s smiling, own laughter, and other’s laughter. Skin conductance level and heart rate correlates of these behaviours were analysed with an exploratory time-series analysis. Results: There was physiological regulation across time found within conversations, such that floor holding was associated with increased heart rate, listening was associated with decreased skin conductance level, and positive affect was associated with an increase in heart rate and skin conductance level for self and other. Furthermore, there is some evidence to suggest that emotional empathy is positively associated with physiological changes. That is, as emotional empathy increases, changes in heart rate associated with unfloored silences, and viewing another’s laughter increases. Conclusions: This study furthered a scarce area of research on physiological correlates of conversational components, and further developed a systematic way of quantifying conversations. This study was the first to utilise multiple autonomic measures in a micro-analytic approach to conversations, and also the first to investigate an individual difference variable. The results suggest that there is a physiological regulation to the sending and receiving of social cues throughout a conversation, and given its novelty, has a wide scope for future directions. Acknowledgements Thank you to Skye and Travis for being my supervisors on this Honour project, and for all your guidance and wisdom throughout this year. Also, I would like to thank Francis for creating the script to helping me run this data. Lastly, I'd like to thank all my research assistants in helping me with processing this complex data. Keywords: Heart Rate, skin conductance level, Conversations, social interaction, Floor Holding, Smiling, Laughter, positive affect, Overlapping speech, silences, emotional empathy, Naturalistic study Conference: ASP2017: 27th Annual Meeting for the Australasian Society for Psychophysiology, Parramatta, Australia, 29 Nov - 1 Dec, 2017. Presentation Type: Oral Presentation Topic: Abstract (Student Award) Citation: Chen W, McDonald S and Wearne T (2019). Examining Physiological Regulation in Dyadic Conversations and the Effect of Emotional Empathy. Conference Abstract: ASP2017: 27th Annual Meeting for the Australasian Society for Psychophysiology. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2017.224.00017 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 23 Oct 2017; Published Online: 25 Jan 2019. * Correspondence: Miss. Wenting Chen, University of New South Wales, Kensington, Australia, wendyy.chen19@gmail.com Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Wenting Chen Skye McDonald Travis Wearne Google Wenting Chen Skye McDonald Travis Wearne Google Scholar Wenting Chen Skye McDonald Travis Wearne PubMed Wenting Chen Skye McDonald Travis Wearne Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.