Impairments of Social Motor Synchrony Evident in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Fitzpatrick, Paula; Frazier, Jean A.; Cochran, David; Mitchell, Teresa V.; Coleman, Caitlin; Schmidt, R. C.

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01323

Cited by 121 publications

(167 citation statements)

References 78 publications

(99 reference statements)

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“…This disruption in synchronization ability was found both for the imitation and synchrony version of the tasks. This replicate previous research which has found individuals with ASD demonstrate problems in imitation [Charman et al, ; Colombi et al, ; Gallese, ; Oberman & Ramachandran, ; Rizzolatti & Fabbri‐Destro, ; Rogers & Pennington, ; Rogers et al, ; Williams et al, ] as well as other research which has found lower levels of synchronization ability in children and adolescents with ASD [Fitzpatrick et al, ; Marsh et al, ]. Our research makes two important contributions to this literature.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Evaluating the importance of social motor synchronization and motor skill for understanding autism

et al. 2017

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Lay Abstract Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have numerous impairments in social interaction that can severely impede mental and physical development, learning, and behavioral functioning at home and in the community and also make treatment difficult. In addition, many individuals have difficulty performing movements of the body that involve both large and small actions. We explored the role of an overlooked dimension of social interaction, social motor synchrony, in ASD, and evaluated its relationship with body movement. In particular we examined the ability of children with and without ASD to perform body movements alone or with another individual. We found that children with ASD were less able to synchronize their body with an experimenter and children with ASD performed single-person motor movements that were slower and more variable in both spacing and timing. Children with ASD had trouble performing movements that were of a consistent size and tempo over the course of the interaction. Such lack of consistency in movement likely makes coordination with another person more difficult. This raises the possibility that these types of body movements could provide new insights into understanding the social problems in ASD. Scientific Abstract Impairments in social interaction and communicating with others are core features of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) but the specific processes underlying such social competence impairments are not well understood. An important key for increasing our understanding of ASD-specific social deficits may lie with the social motor synchronization that takes place when we implicitly coordinate our bodies with others. Here, we tested whether dynamical measures of synchronization differentiate children with ASD from controls and further explored the relationships between synchronization ability and motor control problems. We found (a) that children with ASD exhibited different and less stable patterns of social synchronization ability than controls; (b) children with ASD performed motor movements that were slower and more variable in both spacing and timing; and (c) some social synchronization that involved motor timing was related to motor ability but less rhythmic synchronization was not. These findings raise the possibility that objective dynamical measures of synchronization ability and motor skill could provide new insights into understanding the social deficits in ASD that could ultimately aid clinical diagnosis and prognosis.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Evaluating the importance of social motor synchronization and motor skill for understanding autism

et al. 2017

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“…Therefore, time-series analysis in this context could be extended into the realm of social interaction disorders to search for potential behavioral markers that would help clinicians for a better assessment of patients suffering from a social interaction disorder. Particularly, time-series analysis of the movements has been proved useful for detecting subtle traits like hindered synchronization and patients with ASD when compared to healthy controls (Fitzpatrick et al, 2016). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally, this line of research could yield some light into the search of behavioral markers of social interaction impairments by means of time-series analysis (Fitzpatrick et al, 2016). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Time-Series Analysis of Embodied Interaction: Movement Variability and Complexity Matching As Dyadic Properties

et al. 2016

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There is a growing consensus that a fuller understanding of social cognition depends on more systematic studies of real-time social interaction. Such studies require methods that can deal with the complex dynamics taking place at multiple interdependent temporal and spatial scales, spanning sub-personal, personal, and dyadic levels of analysis. We demonstrate the value of adopting an extended multi-scale approach by re-analyzing movement time-series generated in a study of embodied dyadic interaction in a minimal virtual reality environment (a perceptual crossing experiment). Reduced movement variability revealed an interdependence between social awareness and social coordination that cannot be accounted for by either subjective or objective factors alone: it picks out interactions in which subjective and objective conditions are convergent (i.e., elevated coordination is perceived as clearly social, and impaired coordination is perceived as socially ambiguous). This finding is consistent with the claim that interpersonal interaction can be partially constitutive of direct social perception. Clustering statistics (Allan Factor) of salient events revealed fractal scaling. Complexity matching defined as the similarity between these scaling laws was significantly more pronounced in pairs of participants as compared to surrogate dyads. This further highlights the multi-scale and distributed character of social interaction and extends previous complexity matching results from dyadic conversation to non-verbal social interaction dynamics. Trials with successful joint interaction were also associated with an increase in local coordination. Consequently, a local coordination pattern emerges on the background of complex dyadic interactions in the PCE task and makes joint successful performance possible.

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“…So far, the ability to coordinate movements with another person has been mostly studied in persons with ASD using paradigms that are highly rhythmic and therefore not directly related to naturalistic interactions [26,27]. Reduced and more variable IPS between children or adolescents with ASD and an experimenter has mostly been observed with intentional coordination tasks, like a synchronous interpersonal hand-clapping task [28,29], intentional synchronisation of a swinging pendulum [27], synchronised object tapping [29] or in a social motor coordination battery [28].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reduced nonverbal interpersonal synchrony in autism spectrum disorder independent of partner diagnosis: a motion energy study

et al. 2020

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Background: One of the main diagnostic features of individuals with autism spectrum disorders is nonverbal behaviour difficulties during naturalistic social interactions. The 'Interactional Heterogeneity Hypothesis' of ASD proposes that the degree to which individuals share a common ground substantially influences their ability to achieve smooth social interactions. Methods: To test this hypothesis, we filmed 29 autistic and 29 matched typically developed adults engaged in several conversational tasks. Windowed cross-lagged correlations were computed using the time series of motion energy of both individuals in a dyad. These coefficients were then compared across the three dyad types that were homo-or heterogenous with respect to diagnosis: pairs of two autistic individuals, two typically developed individuals or pairs of one autistic and one typically developed person. Results:We found that all dyad types achieved above-chance interpersonal synchrony, but that synchrony was more expressed in typical dyads compared to both autistic and mixed dyads.Limitations: The method presented here provides only one, albeit objective and robust, approach to explore synchrony. The methodological choices as well as the lack of consideration for other communication modalities may limit our interpretation of the findings. Moreover, the sample size is small with respect to exploring associations between synchrony and various outcome and social skill measures. Conclusions: The present results do not provide support for the Interactional Heterogeneity Hypothesis given that autistic individuals do not coordinate better when interacting with another autistic individual, compared to when interacting with a typical individual.

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Impairments of Social Motor Synchrony Evident in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Cited by 121 publications

References 78 publications

Evaluating the importance of social motor synchronization and motor skill for understanding autism

Evaluating the importance of social motor synchronization and motor skill for understanding autism

Time-Series Analysis of Embodied Interaction: Movement Variability and Complexity Matching As Dyadic Properties

Reduced nonverbal interpersonal synchrony in autism spectrum disorder independent of partner diagnosis: a motion energy study

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