Social motor synchrony and interactive rapport in autistic, non-autistic, and mixed-neurotype dyads

Added on 27/02/2025

Type de contenu

Journal article of the type Scientific research ( ; english)

Themis Efthimiou , Charlotte Wilks , Sarah Foster * , Michelle Dodd * , Noah Sasson , Danielle Ropar , Martin Lages , Sue Fletcher-Watson , Catherine Crompton
Social motor synchrony and interactive rapport in autistic, non-autistic, and mixed-neurotype dyads published in the journal "Autism" Preprint, 12 pages , doi: 10.1177/13623613251319585

*Two co-authors had publicly identified as autistic. [Learn more about this mention]

- 4% of authors cited in the bibliography of this resource have publicly identified as autistic (9 out of 235 authors).
- 12% of references cited in this resource contain at least one author who has publicly identified as autistic (10 out of 84 references).

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Summary/Presentation

In non-autistic populations, social motor synchrony during interactions is linked to increased interpersonal rapport – a friendly connection marked by mutual understanding and ease of communication. Previous research indicates autistic individuals show lower social motor synchrony in interactions with both autistic and non-autistic partners. However, it is unclear if this affects rapport, as synchrony’s role in social communication may differ for autistic individuals. The study had three aims: to replicate and extend previous findings of reduced social motor synchrony in dyads with at least one autistic person; second, to examine the relationship between synchrony and rapport in autistic (n = 12), non-autistic (n = 17), and mixed dyads (n = 14); and third, to investigate reliance on motor synchrony for achieving rapport among autistic and non-autistic participants. We found no evidence that dyads with at least one autistic person have less social motor synchrony than dyads without an autistic person. However, we found that social motor synchrony positively affects rapport more in non-autistic dyads than in autistic dyads. Participant-level analysis indicated that non-autistic individuals require higher social motor synchrony levels to achieve high rapport levels than autistic individuals. These results suggest that non-autistic individuals may emphasise movement synchrony as a key component of successful social interaction.

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