In the Bible it is written: “In the beginning was the Word, and Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John, 1:1). “Word” is the English translation of the Greek term “Logos”, and Logos, besides word, means also: “connection, correspondence, analogy, relationship”. Then, it is meaningful to think: “In the beginning was the interaction”, as interaction is the basis of the life genesis and the bond for every kind of evolution and change.

Whatever it might be the beginning of the world, first was the chaos. Should have been or not a primary Big Bang, certainly it was a primordial complexity. Very likely there was a huge catastrophe but, as Thom argued, each catastrophe is at the same time a creation of new structures. In its nature, catastrophe is morphogenetic. By disintegrating, the cosmos organizes itself, as a seismogenetic process is contemporarily a morphogenetic one. Order comes from disorder, since partial deviations transform the dispersion process into a concentration one, as Prigogine effectively showed within the dissipative structures.

Transition from disorder to order passes through interactions which are mutual actions able to modify the behaviour or the nature of objects, organisms and systems. Interactions presuppose elements which may meet each other, imply a set of meeting constraints, obey to the opportunities and bonds at the stake, and, given specific conditions, originate organization of some kind. Once elements are organized, they, as an ordered system, are able to face and to put up with a large number of troubles and disorders. In such a way, organization, born from disorder, is stronger than disorder itself. Needless to say, every organization is far from being perfect, and, then, it necessarily generates disorder. Chaos is coming back again. Morin called this bidirectional process the “great game” between disorder and order, between chaos and unity.

In this eternal game, disorder, interaction, order and organization are four basic elements which are at the same time complementary, concurrent, and antagonist. They act together and each of them is unthinkable without the others. Consequently, unlikelihood turns into local likelihood however remaining unlikelihood. Human beings are compelled to life in an uncertain universe, where the dialogue between order and disorder is the general rule and makes up the “reality”. Disorder is everywhere, since there are disorders into order as well as into disorder. Nevertheless, disorder is not absolute. From it some elements start to interact due to the plain action of the probabilistic law.

In such a way interactions may originate a system, described as “a set of unities with relationships among them” (according to the perspective of von Bertalanffy), or as “a organized totality formed by unanimous elements which are defined each other by mutual relationships” (according to the perspective of de Saussure). Therefore, interactions give rise to the relationships which, in turn, generate a given organization. Organization is characterized by a basic unitas multiplex, that is, a paradox: from the standpoint of the whole, it is homogeneous; from the standpoint of the constituents it is heterogeneous. Unity is such only within difference.

Moreover, totality is more than the addition of the single parts because of the superadditive composition rule, proposed by von Foerster. As he highlighted, composition of interacting components is superadditive. This phenomenon is strictly connected with the emergence process, as emergence is a new quality referring to the system constituents. Such quality can neither be reduced into previous elements nor be deduced from them. It is a new condition of the system, unforeseeable in its becoming. Consequently, the whole and the elements are strictly tied and mutually interconnected. Already Pascal pointed out that it is impossible to know parts without knowing whole, as well as it is impossible to know whole without knowing parts. However, each totality is grounded on the competition among its elements and involves the struggle among them.

Within such a perspective, it is worth deepening how organization is organized. Certainly, it shows a surface order, observable from everybody, in special circumstances only by the experts. In any case, such order implies invariance or stability, stratified in different layers which enable further organizations. Organization cannot be portioned into clear-cut and discrete parts, or compartments insulated in character. Moreover, it should be noticed that organization is an active process, changing unceasingly referring to the contingent conditions of environment. Then, organization organizes itself by means of set of assembly rules, of connections, and of transformations. It is an open and contemporarily closed system, since it interacts with the context by assuming a given identity which is circumscribed by specific borders.

In any case, organization shows patterns to obtain its goals, to face and overcome difficulties, to produce outcomes, and the like. Obviously, patterns and their detection are essential for understanding the nature and evolution of organization, as well as for communication. The competence in recognizing organizational patterns is crucial for an organism’s survival, as it is a premise for foraging, danger avoidance, mate selection, and, in the whole, associating specific responses with particular events and objects.

Generally, such patterning is manifest and gives a certain shape to organization. As a rule, a manifest patterning has a macroscopic nature, easily readable from outside time by time. However, as Eibl-Eibesfeldt argued, “behaviour consists of patterns in time. Investigations of behaviour deal with sequences that, in contrast to bodily characteristics, are not always visible”. Often, ever always, these hidden patterns are basic for an adequate and effective understanding of behaviour organization, since they build up its design. It is obvious that, before examining the function and evolution of any pattern, it must be first detected. Often it is impossible to detect hidden recurrent action patterns on the basis of order alone in an organization because it is characterized by a large complexity and by a great variability in the number of behaviours occurring between their components.

The purpose of this book is to highlight a new device able to discover and recognize hidden real-time patterns in intra- and inter-individual streams of behavioural events, which may include physiological and environmental events. This device, called THEME and its pattern detection algorithms were created by Magnusson on the basis of his model, called the T-system, concerning the real-time structure of behaviour and interactions. THEME has turned out to be an effective and flexible way to analyze and understand a very large range of interactive processes. The current book intends to show some of the possible applications of THEME, starting from hidden patterns in a population of neurons to cultural patterns passing through the detection of hidden patterns in non verbal communication.

We have put a great deal of thought and effort into the definition of the structure of the book and the sequence of the contributions, so that those in search of a specific reading path will be rewarded. To this end we have divided the book into six main Sections comprising 18 chapters overall:

1. Theoretical framework

6. Hidden patterns in social and cultural contexts.

Each section will be introduced by a brief presentation, in which the main points included in it will be highlighted.

We think it is worthwhile to spend some words about THEME. The development of THEME itself started around 1980 after a number of preparatory steps. Having graduated in 1975 with a thesis on social organisation and communication in social insects and primates, Magnusson focused his doctoral research tutored by Melvin Lyon at the Psychological laboratory of Copenhagen University on verbal and nonverbal communication in humans. He thus came face-to-face with the daunting complexity of human and animal interactions. With as background the heated debates of those years among linguists, behaviourists and ethologists, he was particularly inspired by the French ethologist Hubert Montagner’s discoveries of social interaction mechanisms in both social insects and humans and, in the USA, psychologist Starkey Duncan’s discovery of para-verbal and nonverbal mechanisms in human turn taking. Long lasting collaboration with both resulted.

In this situation, the computer revolution, which would soon lead to the personal computer (PC) clearly offered unprecedented possibilities and Magnusson consequently experimented with the use of a various standard multivariate statistical methods and software helped by his countryman and statistician Agnar Hoskuldsson at the Danish Technical University. Magnusson also carried out a wide ranging search for specialized behavioural analysis software in Europe and the USA, but the testing of the very few programs found indicated that new models, algorithms, and software were needed to harness this new source of power for behavioural research. Consequently, in 1979 Magnusson received a medal from the University of Copenhagen for a thesis concerning computational and ethological analysis of children’s interactions seen as multivariate streams of sequential and parallel events. In this thesis he put forward some of the elements that since have grown into a combination of algorithms and a mathematical model concerning the temporal organization of behaviour and interactions.

In 1983 Magnusson accepted an invitation from André Langaney at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris to continue his work at the Anthropological Laboratory at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris where he thus came to work as associate professor and finally as deputy director until 1989. During this period, close collaboration, lasting to this day, was started with research teams at the Universities of Paris V, VIII and XIII where he in all cases later held temporary positions as invited professor. This includes the Speech Research Group directed by Rodolphe Ghiglione at the Psychology Department of the University of Paris VIII, the Laboratory for Experimental Ethology and Sociobiology at the University of Paris XIII with Claude Baudoin et al, and finally, cognition and communication research with Janine Beaudichon et al at the (Alfred Binet) Psychological laboratory, University of Paris V, in the Sorbonne.

On returning to his native country Iceland, Magnusson founded in 1991 the Human Behaviour Laboratory (http://www.hbl.hi.is), which he currently directs as a Research professor at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik. In 2000 he created the company PatternVision Ltd (http://www.patternvision.com), which has taken over the technical development of THEME under his direction, but THEME is currently marketed and supported world wide by Noldus Information Technology in Holland (http://www.noldus.com).

This book may be seen as the most recent result of collaboration between research groups at a number of European universities connected by a formal inter-university convention named “Methodology for the Analysis of Social Interaction” (MASI). The group collaborates closely with researchers in the US and Japan. The formal convention, aimed at the testing of Magnusson’s analytical model and the development of new methods for the analysis of social interaction, was initially created and based at the Psychological laboratory of the University of Paris V at the Sorbonne in Paris under the direction of Pr. J. Beaudichon. The MASI convention has since then been extended to include more universities and is currently based at the University of Paris VIII and is headed by Pr. A. Blanchet, President of the French Psychological Association.

The Editors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of a number of people and institutions without whose help this project could not have been carried out. We are thankful to the University of Milan-Bicocca for its support. We also acknowledge the Fondazione Piera, Pietro e Giovanni Ferrero, Alba, Italy, for grant given to the Centro per gli Studi Avanzati nelle Scienze dell Comunicazione (CESCOM – Centre for Advanced Research in Communication Sciences) of University of Milan-Bicocca, Italy (http://www.cescom.info; e-mail: cescom@unimib.it).

We are also grateful to Valentino Zurloni, Marcello Mortillaro and Linda Confalonieri who helped the Editors in the difficult editorial process in the preparation of the current book. A final thank goes to Prof. Susanna Mantovani, Dean of the Faculty in Education Science at the University of Milan-Bicocca, and to Prof. Ugo Fabietti, Head of the Department of Epistemology and Education Hermeneutics at the same university.

In the end, we hope that the contents of this book will stimulate further integrated research by using the THEME approach to the detection of hidden real-time patterns in different scientific domains. In particular, we hope that in the near future a new deal of research on interaction and order organization may be enhanced to better understand the different phenomena and processes which define our human world.

L. Anolli
University of Milan-Bicocca 
Milan, Italy

S. Duncan JR.,
University of Chicago
Chicago, IL, USA

M.S. Magnusson.
University of Iceland
Reykjavik, Iceland

G. Riva
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore 
Milan, Italy

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Contents

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Preface
Marcello Fontanesi
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Postface
André Langaney
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Introduction
L. Anolli, S. Duncan Jr., M.S. Magnusson, G. Riva
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PART 1 - Theoretical Framework

1. Understanding Social Interaction: Discovering Hidden Structure with Model and Algorithms,
M. MAGNUSSON
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2. The Detection of the Hidden Design of Meaning,
L. ANOLLI
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3. Microanalysis of T-patterns: Analysis of Symmetry/Asymmetry in Social Interaction,
M .T. ANGUERA
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PART 2 - Hidden Patterns in Neuronal and Physiological Activity

4. Communication within a Neural Network,
A. NICOL, K. KENDRICK, and M. MAGNUSSON
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5. Hidden Patterns of Male Sex Hormones and Behaviour Vary with Life History,
K. HIRSCHENHAUSER and D. FRIGERIO
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PART 3 - Hidden Patterns in Courtship Interaction

6. Microanalysis of Drosophila Courtship Behaviour, B. ARTHUR and M. MAGNUSSON
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