Social consequences and specificity of intrapersonal dis-synchrony in autism and other disorders of social interaction

人际同步性作为互动个体内部非言语信号的时间协调，是人际耦合机制产生和顺利互动的基础。特殊的非语言交流是自闭症谱系障碍(ASD)的核心症状，我们的目的是调查这是否会转化为凝视和手势的异常个人协调。通过部署高度标准化的人际研究环境，使用眼球跟踪技术和来自不同模式的精确同步数据，我们测量了ASD患者在真实互动过程中非语言行为的定量参数。结果显示，在ASD患者中，凝视及其伴随手势之间产生了更大、更可变的时间耦合窗口。我们找不到证据证明通过敲击任务评估的个人内部同步性测量和感觉运动计时表现之间的联系。此外，我们没有发现手势的空间属性的组差异，这是通过新开发的帧-差分算法测量的。在我们目前正在进行的两项后续研究中，我们的目标是检验个人内部不同步的感知是否会影响非语言信号的交际效果和印象的形成。在这一延续方案中，我们在已有研究的基础上，认为目前还缺乏研究来调查我们在个体ASD中发现的影响的特殊性。这一点尤其重要，因为ASD的高共病比率以及与其他精神病理学的症状重叠。与此相一致，我们建议调查精神分裂症患者和抑郁症患者的个人同步性。所有三个精神病组(即自闭症、精神分裂症和抑郁症)在社交和沟通领域都有相同的障碍，但每一组仍按不同的症状进行划分。包括这些精神病组，我们将能够推断潜在的个人内部不同步的潜在机制，它对ASD的特异性，从而它在鉴别诊断中的潜在应用。

Intrapersonal synchrony as the temporal coordination of nonverbal signal within interacting individuals could be constitutive for the emergence of interpersonal coupling mechanisms and smooth interactions. Peculiar nonverbal communication is a core symptom of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and our aim was to investigate if this translates into deviant intrapersonal coordination of gaze and gestures.Deploying a highly standardized interpersonal study setup with eye-tracking technique and precisely synchronized data from different modalities, we measured quantitative parameters of nonverbal behaviour in individuals with ASD during real interactions. Results revealed empirical evidence for the production of larger and more variable temporal coupling windows between gaze and its accompanying gestures in individuals with ASD. We could not find evidence for a link of intrapersonal synchrony measures and sensorimotor timing performance assessed by a tapping task. Additionally, we did not find group differences in spatial properties of the gestures, measured by a newly developed frame-differencing algorithm. In two follow-up studies that we are currently developing, we aim to test if the perception of intrapersonal dis-synchrony affects the communicative effect of nonverbal signals and impression formation.Within this continuation proposal, we build up on our achievements and argue that there is research lacking in order to investigate specificity of effects that we found in individuals ASD. This is especially important regarding high rates of comorbidity in ASD and a symptomatic overlap with other psychopathologies. In line with this, we suggest to investigate intrapersonal synchrony in individuals with schizophrenia as well as in individuals with depression. All three psychiatric groups (i.e. ASD, schizophrenia, and depression) share impairments in the social and communicative domain, but still each group delineates by distinct symptomatology. Including these psychiatric groups, we will be able to infer potential underlying mechanisms of intrapersonal dis-synchrony, its specificity to ASD and thus its potential use in differential diagnostics.