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The Mirroring Dance: Synchrony and Interaction Quality of Five Adolescents and Adults on the Autism Spectrum in Dance/Movement Therapy
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

The Mirroring Dance: Synchrony and Interaction Quality of Five Adolescents and Adults on the Autism Spectrum in Dance/Movement Therapy

Elizabeth Manders, Sharon Goodill, Sabine C. Koch, Ellen Giarelli, Marcia Polansky, Kathleen Fisher and Thomas Fuchs
Frontiers in psychology, v 12, pp 717389-717389
14 Oct 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.717389
PMID: 34721165
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
url
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.717389View
Published, Version of Record (VoR)CC BY V4.0,  Open

Abstract

Psychology, Multidisciplinary Psychology Social Sciences
Background: Individuals on the autism spectrum are often described as having atypical social interactions. Ideally, interactional synchrony helps any interaction flow smoothly with each individual responding verbally, non-verbally, and/or emotionally within a short timeframe. Differences in interactional synchrony may impact how individuals on the autism spectrum experience social encounters. Method: This mixed methods pilot study examined interactional synchrony in five cases of adolescents and adults on the autism spectrum through secondary analysis of video of the participants in movement-based mirroring tasks during dance/movement therapy. Raters described the movement and interactions of the participants while they were leading and following mirroring and engaged in open-ended free dances with a partner. Videos were also scored on measures of affective engagement, flow of the interaction, and synchrony. Results: One of the most striking findings of this study was the difference between engagement in the instructions of the task and engagement with the partner: participants often followed the instructions for the mirroring tasks with little further social engagement with their partner. When participants did engage in moments of social initiation, attunement to the partner, and interactive behaviors, these did not develop into longer interactions. A paired t-test of the correlation coefficients for each participant showed that scores on synchrony and affective engagement were more strongly positively correlated in the less structured open-ended dance and in video clips of interactive behaviors, than in the videos of simply leading or following mirroring. Synchrony was also significantly more strongly positively correlated with the observed flow of the interaction than with observed affective engagement. With the small sample size, however, most of the correlation coefficients were not significant and should be tested on a larger sample. Discussion: Interpersonal synchrony may not be sufficient to effectively support social engagement when individuals on the autism spectrum simply follow instructions to synchronize their movements. Synchrony-based interventions may therefore need to include more complex open-ended social scenarios as interactional synchrony may then be more correlated with perceived interaction quality. Therapists may also need to partner with participants to model using non-verbal social behaviors to develop interactions within mirroring tasks.

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15 citations in Web of Science
17 citations in Scopus

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
International collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
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