Socio-emotional synchrony in social interactions: the impact of partner neurotype

作为一个成功的社交世界的领航员依赖于形成和维持社会关系;从建立持久的友谊，成为一个熟练的调解人在会议室。改善个人之间的人际关系会增加对未来互动的兴趣（Crompton...& Ropar，2020），以及更大的情感共鸣（即，与他人在情感上“同步”）提高了关系强度（Brown等人，2022）并促进亲社会行为（West等人，2021年）。此外，一个人在表达自己时的身体运动以及这是否与他们的互动伙伴一致，在社交中起着重要作用（Cook，2016; Sowden等人，最近，神经多样性对这种社会情感体验的影响引起了人们的兴趣。事实上，尽管自闭症个体在与非自闭症同龄人互动时试图伪装或“隐藏”他们的自闭症特征，但跨神经类型的人际互动（自闭症和非自闭症个体之间）比相同神经类型的互动（自闭症/自闭症或非自闭症/非自闭症对）更具挑战性。这包括信息传递的有效性较差（Crompton，Ropar等人，2020），社会理解（Crompton，Hallett等人，2020）和人际关系（克朗普顿...& Ropar，2020年）。鉴于越来越重视在工作场所和教育环境中支持神经多样性（例如，gov.uk和国家自闭症协会），现在是时候调查神经类型之间和神经类型内部成功社会互动的障碍和促进因素。米尔顿（2012）提出的“双重移情问题”描述了这种双向的社会理解困难。然而，目前的研究未能解释为什么相同神经类型的相互作用更有效。该项目将通过设计和测试个体之间社会情感同步的具体实验措施来确定促成更好/更差融洽关系的因素。这将在三个测量水平上进行索引：1）经验（例如，情感的主观体验的同步性）; 2）行为的（例如，非语言表达同步）和3）身体上（例如，唤醒水平的同步性）。

Being a successful navigator of the social world relies on forming and maintaining social relationships; from building lasting friendships to being a skilled mediator in the boardroom. Improved interpersonal rapport between individuals leads to increased interest in future interaction(Crompton...& Ropar, 2020), and greater emotional resonance (i.e., being emotionally 'in sync') with others improves relationship strength(Brown et al., 2022) and promotes prosocial behaviour (West et al., 2021). Additionally, one's body movement when expressing themselves and whether this is congruent with their interaction partner has an important role in social communication (Cook, 2016; Sowden et al.,2021).Recently, the impact of neurodiversity on such socio-emotional experiences has gained interest. Indeed, despite attempts made by autistic individuals to camouflage or 'hide' their autistic traits when interacting with non-autistic peers, cross-neurotype interpersonal interactions (between autistic and non-autistic individuals) are more challenging than same-neurotype interactions (autistic/autistic or non-autistic/non autistic pairs). This includes poorer effectiveness of information transfer (Crompton, Ropar, et al., 2020), social understanding (Crompton, Hallett, et al., 2020) and interpersonal rapport (Crompton...& Ropar,2020). Given growing emphasis on supporting neurodiversity in workplace and education settings (e.g., gov.uk and National Autistic Society), it is timely to investigate barriers and facilitators to successful social interaction between and within neurotypes. The 'double empathy problem', a concept proposed by Milton (2012), describes such bi-directional social understanding difficulties. However, current research fails to explain why same-neurotype interactions are more effective. This project will identify factors contributing to better/worse rapport by designing and testing concrete experimental measures of socio-emotional synchrony between individuals. This will be indexed across three levels of measurement: 1) Experiential (e.g., synchrony in subjective experiences of emotion); 2) Behavioural (e.g., non-verbal expression synchrony) and 3) Bodily (e.g., synchrony in arousal levels).