Alexandra Paxton

Alexandra Paxton

I'm an assistant professor in the Psychological Sciences Department at UConn, and I take a data-rich approach to understanding human social dynamics.

Posts by Collection

chapters

B(eo)W(u)LF

Paxton, A., & Dale, R. (2013). B(eo)W(u)LF: Facilitating recurrence analysis on multi-level language. arXiv:1308.2696 [cs.CL].

PSBigData

Paxton, A. (2019). #PSBigData: Helping big data research become more ethical and more open. Psychonomic Society Featured Content.

The Belmont Report in the age of big data: Ethics at the intersection of psychological science and data science

Paxton, A. (2020). The Belmont Report in the age of big data: Ethics at the intersection of psychological science and data science. In S. E. Woo, L. Tay, & R. Proctor (Eds.), Big data methods for psychological research: New horizons and challenges (pp. 347-372). American Psychological Association. doi: 10.1037/0000193-016 https://alexandrapaxton.com/files/paxton-belmont_report_in_big_data-accepted.pdf

miscellany

portfolio

proceedings

Complexity matching in dyadic interaction

Abney, D., Paxton, A., Kello, C.T., & Dale, R. (2013). Complexity matching in dyadic interaction. In P. Passos, J. Barrieros, R. Cordovil, D. Araújo, & F. Melo (Eds.), Studies in Perception and Action XII. Proceedings from the Seventeenth International Conference on Perception and Action.

From minor mishap to major catastrophe: Lexical choice in miscommunication

Roche, J. M., Paxton, A., Ibarra, A., & Tanenhaus, M. K. (2013). From minor mishap to major catastrophe: Lexical choice in miscommunication. In M. Knauff, M. Pauen, N. Sebanz, & I. Wachsmuth (Eds.), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

Scale-independent aggression

Blau, J. J. C., & Paxton, A. (2019). Scale-independent aggression. In L. van Dijk and R. Withagen (Eds.), Studies in Perception and Action XX: Proceedings from the Twentieth International Conference on Perception and Action. Enschede: Ipskamp Printing.

Nest-ed affordances

Chiovaro, M., & Paxton, A. (2019). Nest-ed affordances. In L. van Dijk and R. Withagen (Eds.), Studies in Perception and Action XX: Proceedings from the Twentieth International Conference on Perception and Action. Enschede: Ipskamp Printing.

The case for intersectionality in ecological psychology

Paxton, A., Blau, J. J. C., & Weston, M. (2019). The case for intersectionality in ecological psychology. In L. van Dijk and R. Withagen (Eds.), Studies in Perception and Action XX: Proceedings from the Twentieth International Conference on Perception and Action. Enschede: Ipskamp Printing.

Acoustic specification of upper limb movement in voicing

Pouw, W., Paxton, A., Harrison, S. J., & Dixon, J. (2019). Acoustic specification of upper limb movement in voicing. In A. Grimminger (Ed.), Proceedings of the 6th Gesture and Speech in Interaction. Paderborn: Universitaetsbibliothek Paderborn.

publications

Scale-independent aggression

Published in Complexity, 1900

Blau, J. J. C., & Paxton, A. (2020). Scale-independent aggression: A fractal analysis of four levels of human aggression. Complexity, 2020, 2047157.

Ad hoc efforts for advancing data science education

Published in PLOS Computational Biology, 1900

DeMasi, O.*, Paxton, A.*, & Koy, K. (2020). Ad hoc efforts for advancing data science education. PLOS Computational Biology, 16(5), e1007695. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007695

Action coordination in non-human self-organizing collectives

Published in Ecological Psychology, 1900

Chiovaro, M., & Paxton, A. (2020). Action coordination in non-human self-organizing collectives: Multidisciplinary lessons from living and nonliving systems. Ecological Psychology, 32(4), 139-142. doi: 10.1080/10407413.2020.1842136

Acoustic information about upper limb movement in voicing

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1900

Pouw, W., Paxton, A., Harrison, S. J., & Dixon, J. (2020). Acoustic information about upper limb movement in voicing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(21), 11364-11367. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2004163117.

Ecological psychology meets ecology

Published in Ecological Psychology, 1900

Chiovaro, M., & Paxton, A. (2020). Ecological psychology meets ecology: Apis mellifera as a model for perception-action, social dynamics, and human factors. Ecological Psychology, 32(4), 192-213. doi: 10.1080/10407413.2020.1836966

Reply to Ravignani and Kotz

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1900

Pouw, W., Paxton, A., Harrison, S. J., & Dixon, J. (2020). Reply to Ravignani and Kotz: Physical impulses from upper-limb movements impact the respiratory-vocal system. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(38), 23225-23226. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2015452117

Cooperation in sound and motion

Published in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 1900

Abney, D., Paxton, A., Dale, R., & Kello, C. (2021). Cooperation in sound and motion: Complexity matching in collaborative interaction. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 150(9), 1760-1771. doi: 10.1037/xge0001018

Functional interdependence in coupled dissipative structures

Published in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 1900

De Bari, B., Paxton, A., Dixon, J. A., Kondepudi, D., & Kay, B. A. (2021). Functional interdependence in coupled dissipative structures: Physical foundations of biological intra- and inter-organism. Entropy, 23(5), 614. doi: 10.3390/e23050614

Gesture-speech physics in fluid speech and rhythmic hand movement

Published in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1900

Pouw, W., de Jonge-Hoekstra, L., Harrison, S. J., Paxton, A., & Dixon, J. (2021). Gesture-speech physics in fluid speech and rhythmic hand movement. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1491(1), 89-105. doi: 10.1111/nyas.14532

Child-caregiver interactions during a collaborative motor task in children with cerebral palsy

Published in Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities, 1900

Schwab, S. M., Carver, N. S., Forman, M., Abney, D. H., Davis, T. J., Riley, M. A., Paxton, A., & Silva, P. L. (2022). Child-caregiver interactions during a collaborative motor task in children with cerebral palsy: A descriptive exploratory study. Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities, 34, 255-277. doi: 10.1007/s10882-021-09798-6 http://a-paxton.github.io/files/schwab_et_al-2022-jdpd.pdf

Community, time, and (con)text

Published in Cognitive Science, 1900

Paxton, A., Varoquaux, N., Holdgraf, C., & Geiger, R. S. (accepted). Community, time, and (con)text: Online communication patterns in open-source software communities and their implications for community health. Cognitive Science.

Natural, nonlinear, and noisy

Published in , 1900

Chiovaro, M., & Paxton, A. (under revision). Natural, nonlinear, and noisy: A quantitative approach to the collection and analysis of real-world social behavior.

Say that again

Published in , 1900

Mankovich, A., Wittke, K., Blume, J., Mastergeorge, A. M., Paxton, A., & Naigles, L. R. (in preparation). Say that again: Quantifying patterns of grammatical production for children with ASD using recurrence analysis.

recent

Publication: Social dynamics of nonliving dissipative structures

Publication: Humans are a kind of dissipative structure---that is, an entity that requires the addition of energy in order to sustain itself. Recently, Ben de Bari led a project in which we investigated seemingly social behavior of nonliving dissipative structures, allowing us to explore how much of our human social dynamics might be explained by the constraints and pressures of being dissipative structures in shared environments (De Bari, Paxton, Kondepudi, Kay, & Dixon, 2021, Entropy).

Ethics: Psychological scientists, data science, and data ethics

Data ethics: Psychological scientists are increasingly interested in harnessing big data and naturally occurring data, but this new data landscape poses new challenges. I argue that the Belmont principles of respect for persons, beneficence, and justice can---and should!---serve as our ethical foundation as we deal with human-derived data (Paxton, 2020, Big data methods for psychological research: New horizons and challenges). https://alexandrapaxton.com/files/paxton-belmont_report_in_big_data-accepted.pdf

Publication: Online and offline social cohesion

Publication: Graduate student Megan Chiovaro led an interdisciplinary collaboration exploring the connection between online and offline social cohesion by analyzing real-world action and Twitter activity during the Arab Spring (Chiovaro, L. C. Windsor*, A. Windsor, & Paxton*, 2021, PLOS ONE).

Publication: ALIGN

Methods development: Automatically and reproducibly quantify multi-level linguistic alignment in natural conversation with ALIGN (Duran, Paxton, & Fusaroli, 2019, Psychological Methods). Find our Python package on GitHub, or install it directly from PyPI! https://doi.org/10.1037/met0000206

Publication: Intersectional, Social, Ecological

Conference proceedings: We argue that ecological psychology must grow to consider how intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991) impacts social effectivities and social affordances (Paxton, Blau, & Weston, 2019, Studies in Perception and Action XV: Proceedings from the Twentieth International Conference on Perception and Action).

resources

ALIGN

ALIGN. Python library for extracting quantitative, reproducible metrics of multi-level alignment between two speakers in naturalistic language corpora.

bwlf

bwlf. Code to help get text data into recurrence-ready analysis form. Development supported by the NSF under grants BCS-0826825 and BCS-0926670.

clustering_tutorial

clustering-tutorial. Tutorial for k-means clustering in R, with lessons on good coding practices and the tidyverse along the way.

crqa_tools

crqa-tools. Tutorials and tools to help with RQA and CRQA in R. Currently includes tutorials on continuous and categorical RQA and CRQA, along with tools to help with plotting.

Data on the Mind

Data on the Mind. A community resource dedicated to helping bridge the gaps between big data and cognitive science.

Data on the Mind 2017 workshop

Data on the Mind 2017 workshop. Materials from Data on the Mind's 2017 summer workshop, aimed at providing early-career researchers in cognitive science and psychology with hands-on introductions to essential data science skills. Exercises and tutorial videos are provided below. Generously funded by the Estes Fund, Berkeley's D-Lab, and Project Jupyter.

Gensim_LSI_Word_Similarities

Gensim-LSI-Word-Similarities. Functions to calculate various similarity scores from Gensim's latent semantic indexing in Python.

living-documents

living-documents. A tutorial on using Jupyter notebooks and R markdown to create living documents, reproducible reports, and reproducible manuscripts. Includes Binder-based demonstration to get you started (nearly) instantly.

NODS in psychological research

NODS in psychological research. Repository of exercises and code associated with my Spring 2021 class, "Naturally occurring data in psychological research" (PSYC 5570).

plotting-coupled-data

plotting-coupled-data. Code plots coupled categorical and continuous time series in a single, elegant plot. It was originally created to visualize concurrent speech (categorical) and movement (continuous) signals in the same plot.

stats-tools

stats-tools. Bits of code to help clean up and display statistical analyses, largely in R.

xsede-quickstarts

xsede-quickstarts. A few quickstart guides to getting going on XSEDE resources (Jetstream and PSC Bridges). In addition to walkthroughs, it also includes some basic scripts that you can use as templates to help manage your instances.

talks

teaching

Teaching experience 1

Undergraduate course, University 1, Department, 2014

This is a description of a teaching experience. You can use markdown like any other post.

Teaching experience 2

Workshop, University 1, Department, 2015

This is a description of a teaching experience. You can use markdown like any other post.