Observational study reveals head motion synchrony predicts higher discomfort in youth peer interactions, suggesting natural synchrony reflects communicative strain.
Key Points
To quantify naturalistic head motion synchrony across autistic and non-autistic youth dyads and examine its relationship with self-reported interaction enjoyment and discomfort.
Paired autistic and non-autistic youth into three dyad types (autistic-autistic, autistic-non-autistic, and non-autistic-non-autistic) during a brief video-recorded conversation.
Tracked frame-by-frame head position using OpenPose computer vision software and calculated head motion synchrony using cross-wavelet coherence against time-scrambled controls.
Interacting dyads demonstrated significant head motion synchrony compared to time-scrambled pairs, with no significant differences in synchrony levels across the three dyad types.
Across dyad types, higher head motion synchrony significantly and negatively predicted interaction enjoyment, while positively predicting youth-reported discomfort.