Brief Report: Specificity of Interpersonal Synchrony Deficits to Autism Spectrum Disorder and Its Potential for Digitally Assisted Diagnostics

Abstract

Reliably diagnosing autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in adulthood poses a challenge to clinicians due to the absence of specific diagnostic markers. This study investigated the potential of interpersonal synchrony (IPS), which has been found to be reduced in ASD, to augment the diagnostic process. IPS was objectively assessed in videos of diagnostic interviews in a representative referral population from two specialized autism outpatient clinics. In contrast to the current screening tools that could not reliably differentiate, we found a significant reduction of IPS in interactions with individuals later diagnosed with ASD (n = 16) as opposed to those not receiving a diagnosis (n = 23). While these findings need to be validated in larger samples, they nevertheless underline the potential of digitally-enhanced diagnostic processes for ASD.

A Virtual Reality Based System for the Screening and Classification of Autism

“…The German versions of the following questionnaires where administrated: a demographic questionnaire, to collect biographical data and previous VR experience; the Multiple Choice Vocabulary Intelligence Test (verbal intelligence; MWT-B; [39]) and the Basic Intelligence Scale Scale 2 -Revision (non-verbal intelligence; CFT-20-R; [67]) to corroborate inclusion criteria of the participants' IQ; the Landolt C test, the Stereo Optical test [51] and the Ishihara colour-blindness test [12] for ocular and colour deficiencies. In phase three, after the VR task, participants were asked to answer a rapport questionnaire to assess the quality of the interaction with the avatar [35]; the autism-spectrumquotient (measuring extent of autistic traits; AQ, [8]) and the empathy quotient (to assess empathy; EQ, [7]). In addition, we measured motor difficulties with the Adult Dyspraxia Checklist (ADC) [33] and depressive symptoms with the Beck Depression Inventary (BDI-II) [27].…”

The Components of Interpersonal Synchrony in the Typical Population and in Autism: A Conceptual Analysis

“…By contrast, autistic and non-autistic participants achieved comparable levels of synchrony in an interaction in which the social, perceptual, and motoric content of the interaction was substantially reduced, in that it involved only the exchange of signals with an unseen partner via a computer button press ( Koehne et al, 2016 ). Together with evidence that synchrony is reduced but still present at above chance levels in more complex interactions ( Georgescu et al, 2020 ; Koehler et al, 2021 ), this finding suggests that a basic tendency to synchronise may be intact in autism. However, it is unclear which particular processes may account for the differences in IS during naturalistic social interactions.…”

“…Further, while there is some evidence of a positive association between motor abilities, assessed in an individual context, and IS ( Brezis et al, 2017 ), the existence of such an association has also been found to depend on the particular tasks used ( Fitzpatrick et al, 2017a ). Other studies have failed to find a significant association between motor abilities assessed in a solo context and IS in autism ( Kaur et al, 2018 ; Koehler et al, 2021 ). However, these studies used generalised measures of motor ability, rather than specific component processes of motor functioning ( Gowen and Hamilton, 2013 ), such as motor planning, motor timing, and motor control.…”

“…A similar pattern of results has emerged from the analysis of naturalistic interactions. IS was reduced during a clinical diagnostic interview for adults who were subsequently given an autism diagnosis, compared to those who were not ( Koehler et al, 2021 ). Similarly, conversations between dyads in which at least one partner was autistic were characterised by reduced IS, relative to conversations between typical dyads ( Georgescu et al, 2020 ).…”

Evaluating Interactional Synchrony in Full-Body Interaction with Autistic Children

“…Therefore, with this paper, we tested MEA's usability in dynamic full-body interactions between a facilitator and an autistic child where we investigate MEA's advantages and limitations in semi-experimental settings. MEA has been used in the last decade to measure interactional synchrony in research related to autism [53,54]. It is built on two distinct modules: 1) MEA which allows the computation of movement from video pixel changes and 2) the rMEA R package [8], which makes available the computation of synchrony from that pixel quantification data using windowed cross-correlation.…”