Sympathetic nervous system synchrony: An exploratory study of its relationship with the therapeutic alliance and outcome in couple therapy.

Tourunen, Anu; Kykyri, Virpi‐Liisa; Seikkula, Jaakko; Kaartinen, Jukka; Tolvanen, Asko; Penttonen, Markku

doi:10.1037/pst0000198

Cited by 22 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…Comparing the three different types of dyads (client-client, client-therapist, therapist-therapist) revealed that the co-therapists had indeed more head and body synchrony than the other kinds of dyads. Previous research on the same data also found a large amount of physiological synchrony (electrodermal activity) between co-therapists (Karvonen et al, 2016;Tourunen et al, 2020). The large amount of synchrony between the co-therapists can be interpreted as them being bodily involved similarly in the situation, in listening to the clients' problems, and in trying to help them through their professional roles.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 65%

Nonverbal Synchrony in Couple Therapy Linked to Clients’ Well-Being and the Therapeutic Alliance

et al. 2021

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Nonverbal synchrony between individuals has a robust relation to the positive aspects of relationships. In psychotherapy, where talking is the cure, nonverbal synchrony has been related to a positive outcome of therapy and to a stronger therapeutic alliance between therapist and client in dyadic settings. Only a few studies have focused on nonverbal synchrony in multi-actor therapy conversations. Here, we studied the synchrony of head and body movements in couple therapy, with four participants present (spouses and two therapists). We analyzed more than 2000min of couple therapy videos from 11 couple therapy cases using Motion Energy Analysis and a Surrogate Synchrony (SUSY), a procedure used earlier in dyadic psychotherapy settings. SUSY was calculated for all six dyads per session, leading to synchrony computations for 66 different dyads. Significant synchrony occurred in all 29 analyzed sessions and between the majority of dyads. Complex models were used to determine the relations between nonverbal synchrony and the clients’ well-being and all participants’ evaluations of the therapeutic alliance. The clients’ well-being was related to body synchronies in the sessions. Differences were found between the clients’ and therapists’ alliance evaluations: the clients’ alliance evaluations were related to synchrony between both dyads of opposite gender, whereas the therapists’ alliance evaluations were related to synchrony between dyads of the same gender, but opposite to themselves. With four participants present, our study introduces a new aspect of nonverbal synchrony, since as a dyad synchronizes, the other two participants are observing it. Nonverbal synchrony seems to be as important in couple therapy as in individual psychotherapy, but the presence of multiple participants makes the patterns more complex.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 65%

Nonverbal Synchrony in Couple Therapy Linked to Clients’ Well-Being and the Therapeutic Alliance

et al. 2021

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“…Early family therapy practice was distinguished by a willingness to embrace new technologies (tape recorder, film camera, one‐way screen), and some in the profession continue to innovate (e.g. Lee et al ., 2010; McHugh et al ., 2010; Tourunen et al ., 2020; . However, prior to COVID‐19 this mantle had largely been handed on to others; the use of virtual realities (VR) to help with social anxiety and ‘avatar therapy’ for psychosis are perhaps the best‐known recent examples of this (see Aali et al ., 2020 for a review).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Living in a Zoom world’: Survey mapping how COVID‐19 is changing family therapy practice in the UK

Kenny¹,

Galloghly²,

Porter³

et al. 2021

Journal of Family Therapy

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Following the COVID‐19 pandemic, psychological therapies rapidly moved online in mid‐2020. The Association for Family Therapy and Systemic Practice in the UK (AFT) surveyed the attitudes and practices of systemic therapists in the UK in early October 2020, exploring members’ views and gathered information about ongoing needs. A sample of 312 people were included in a mixed methods analysis. In total, 65% of respondents felt their overall experience of using online video technology professionally was positive, further reflected in responses to two open‐ended questions. Detailed thematic analysis revealed that many positive comments were related to the practical advantages of online working, whilst many negative comments were related to technique and the therapeutic relationship. Possible respondent biases are discussed, and the implications of this change in practice are explored. It remains to be seen if this marks the beginning of a more permanent shift in our field as we explore the potential of new technologies. Practitioner Points The vast majority of UK systemic therapists felt that their experience of online video technology was positive. They noted many practical advantages but also identified many challenges regarding therapeutic techniques and the therapeutic relationship. Therapists developed a range of creative solutions to maximise the therapeutic opportunities of online video.

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“…Up to recently, PS in peripheral physiological measures has been studied mainly as a metric of some form of affective connectedness between individuals (reviewed by Palumbo et al, 2017). Examples include peripheral PS in therapist-patient dyads as a measure of psychotherapy success (Koole et al, 2020), in couples in marital counseling as a measure of therapy outcome (Tourunen et al, 2019) and as measure of collaborative learning (Malmberg et al, 2019). Positive results found in these contexts may (partly) be driven by shared attentional engagement to external events, as connectedness between people may be strongly associated with mutual attentiveness (Tickle-Degnen and Rosenthal, 1990).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Physiological Synchrony in EEG, Electrodermal Activity and Heart Rate Detects Attentionally Relevant Events in Time

et al. 2020

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Interpersonal physiological synchrony (PS), or the similarity of physiological signals between individuals over time, may be used to detect attentionally engaging moments in time. We here investigated whether PS in the electroencephalogram (EEG), electrodermal activity (EDA), heart rate and a multimodal metric signals the occurrence of attentionally relevant events in time in two groups of participants. Both groups were presented with the same auditory stimulus, but were instructed to attend either to the narrative of an audiobook (audiobook-attending: AA group) or to interspersed emotional sounds and beeps (stimulus-attending: SA group). We hypothesized that emotional sounds could be detected in both groups as they are expected to draw attention involuntarily, in a bottom-up fashion. Indeed, we found this to be the case for PS in EDA or the multimodal metric. Beeps, that are expected to be only relevant due to specific “top-down” attentional instructions, could indeed only be detected using PS among SA participants, for EDA, EEG and the multimodal metric. We further hypothesized that moments in the audiobook accompanied by high PS in either EEG, EDA, heart rate or the multimodal metric for AA participants would be rated as more engaging by an independent group of participants compared to moments corresponding to low PS. This hypothesis was not supported. Our results show that PS can support the detection of attentionally engaging events over time. Currently, the relation between PS and engagement is only established for well-defined, interspersed stimuli, whereas the relation between PS and a more abstract self-reported metric of engagement over time has not been established. As the relation between PS and engagement is dependent on event type and physiological measure, we suggest to choose a measure matching with the stimulus of interest. When the stimulus type is unknown, a multimodal metric is most robust.

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Sympathetic nervous system synchrony: An exploratory study of its relationship with the therapeutic alliance and outcome in couple therapy.

Abstract: We thank Jarno Mikkonen for his help in coding MATLAB scripts, and Petri Kinnunen and Lauri Viljanto for assisting in technical issues related to the study design.

Cited by 22 publications

References 66 publications

Nonverbal Synchrony in Couple Therapy Linked to Clients’ Well-Being and the Therapeutic Alliance

Nonverbal Synchrony in Couple Therapy Linked to Clients’ Well-Being and the Therapeutic Alliance

‘Living in a Zoom world’: Survey mapping how COVID‐19 is changing family therapy practice in the UK

Physiological Synchrony in EEG, Electrodermal Activity and Heart Rate Detects Attentionally Relevant Events in Time

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