Language and Movement Synchronization in Dyadic Psychotherapeutic Interaction – A Qualitative Review and a Proposal for a Classification

Abstract

In individual psychotherapy verbal communication and movement synchronization are closely interrelated. The microanalysis of timing, rhythm and gestalt of movement has established dynamic movement coordination as a systemic property of the dyadic interaction. Movement synchronization supports and enhances the unfolding of linguistic meaning. In order to substantiate the importance of the concept of synchrony for adult psychotherapy we review evidence from developmental psychology and discuss approaches to measure synchrony with particular reference to the naturalistic setting of dyadic psychotherapy. As the concept of synchrony is still ambiguous, and the respective interactional phenomena are ephemeral and fluid, in the current paper we suggest a set of five criteria for the description of synchronization in general terms and eight additional criteria which specifically enable the description of phenomena of movement synchronization. The five general dimensions are: (1) context, (2) modality, (3) resources, (4) entrainment, and (5) time-lag. The eight categories for the description of movement synchrony are: (1) spatial direction, (2) amplitude, (3) sinuosity, (4) duration, (5) event structure, (6) phase, (7) frequency, and (8) content. To understand the process of participatory sense-making and the emergence of meaning in psychotherapy, synchrony research has to cope with the multimodality of the embodied interaction. This requires an integrated perspective of movement and language. A system for the classification of synchrony phenomena may contribute to the linking of variations and patterns of movement with language and linguistic utterances.

Alterations in the Experience of Time, Space, and Intersubjectivity and the Interaction with Pre-Existent Psychopathology during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…This quote is an explicit description of interpersonal synchrony or the breakdown thereof. Interpersonal synchrony is defined as the temporal coordination of people’s mutual behavioral, physiological, and neurological functions [26, 27]. When two people interact, also in a clinical context, synchrony is a widespread phenomenon.…”

How getting in sync is curative: Insights gained from research in psychotherapy.

“…Examination of the association between patient-therapist synchrony and treatment outcome reveals that some of the findings in the literature support the "more is better" theoretical assumption (Scheidt et al, 2021;Wiltshire et al, 2020), with effect sizes in the low-tomedium range (see online Supplemental Tables S1 and S2), similar in size to those considered meaningful effects in psychotherapy research (DeRubeis et al, 2014) and psychology in general (Smedslund et al, 2022). That is, many of the studies that examined the association between synchrony and outcome found a positive association, with higher synchrony being associated with better outcomes.…”

“…Although size matters (Mogan et al, 2017), the focus in this article is on two, which is the number of individuals involved in the most common forms of psychotherapy. Interpersonal synchrony is thus defined here as the dynamic correspondence ( Scheidt et al, 2021 ) and spontaneous rhythmic and temporal coordination of two individuals’ reciprocal actions, emotions, thoughts, and physiological processes (Ackerman & Bargh, 2010; Palumbo et al, 2017).…”

Associations Between Sympathetic Nervous System Synchrony, Movement Synchrony, and Speech in Couple Therapy

“…Constant high in-phase synchrony with others all the time would quickly lead to dysfunction in interaction and prevent the performance of complex tasks ( Dale et al, 2020 ). To better understand the complex patterns of interpersonal attunement requires more information on the links between different synchrony modalities ( Scheidt et al, 2021 ).…”