This application implements a windowed cross-correlation technique which can be used to analyze time-series data from two interacting partners (a dyad). It produces a matrix of correlation values. Correlations are calculated within a window of user-specified length. They include the zero-order correlation coefficients of the two time-series along the midpoint of the display. They also include correlations between the previous behavior of one partner and the subsequent behavior of the other partner. These are calculated within a user-specified lag. Area above the plot's midline indicates the correlation of current A codes with successive B codes; area beneath the midline indicates the reverse. (See Usage below.) Measurement software to produce time-series amenable to these analyses is available elsewhere on this website.

The software is based directly on Boker, S.M., Xu, M., Rotondo, J.L., King, K. (2002). Windowed Cross-Correlation and Peak Picking for the Analysis of Variability in the Association Between Behavioral Time Series. Psychological Methods, 7, 338-355. Boker et al.'s peak-picking algorithm is not implemented in this application although a version of the software utilizing a simpler peak-picking algorithm is available on request. We demonstrate the use of the technique in Messinger, D. S., Mahoor, M., Chow, S., & Cohn, J. F. (2009). Automated Measurement of Facial Expression in Infant-Mother Interaction: A Pilot Study. Infancy, 14.The software is made available courtesy of R21HD052062, R01HD047417, and NSF 0808767.

The WCC application was written using Microsoft Visual C#.  Microsoft's Office Web Components (OWC) are used in the application to chart the functions and list the data points in a spreadsheet form.

Please email [email protected] about scientific issues and technical issues.

There is no installation required for the application itself, per se, as the executable can be run directly from the directory that you extract it to. However, before you can run it, you must have already installed Microsoft Office 2003 or 2007, and you must also install the latest version of Microsoft's Office Web Components. If you are running Office 2007, you must also install Microsoft's OWC Service Pack 1.

To download the application itself, click here. Once you have it downloaded, extract its entire contents to a new folder located wherever you want it on your hard drive, and, once you have successfully installed the aforementioned Office Web Components, you can simply run wcc.exe. Do not delete the dlls or bmps included with the application, as they are also required to run it. The WCC code is open source, which means it is a work in progress that you can tailor for your own uses should you wish to. The source code for it (written in C# on Visual Studio 2005) is available here. Please send us any modifications so we can create a better WCC app.

1.) Click File->Open
2.) Open example_dyad_data.txt
3.) Set Window and Max Lag values as needed and click the Apply button.
3.) Click on the visualization to display the associated portions of the function being compared on the bottom chart, and to display the respective correlation value in the bottom right-hand corner of the program window.