Physiological responses to affiliation during conversation: Comparing neurotypical males and males with Asperger syndrome

Abstract

We examined the emotional and psychophysiological underpinnings of social interaction in the context of autism spectrum disorder, more specifically, involving participants diagnosed with Asperger syndrome (AS). We recorded participants’ autonomic nervous system (ANS) activation (electrodermal activity, heart rate, and heart rate variability) and facial muscle activation during conversations in two different types of male dyads: (1) ten dyads where one participant has been diagnosed with AS (AS/NT dyads) and (2) nine dyads where both participants are neurotypical (NT/NT dyads). Afterwards, three independent raters assessed continuously each participant’s affiliative and dominant behaviors during the first and last 10 minutes of the conversations. The relationship between the assessed data and ANS responses was examined. We found that, in the NT/NT dyads, a high level of affiliation displayed by the conversational partner calms down the participant when they are actively dominating the interaction. In contrast, when the participants themselves expressed affiliation, their psychophysiological responses indicated increase in arousal, which suggests that the giving of affiliation is physiologically “hard work.” The affiliation-related ANS responses were similar in those NT participants whose conversational partner had AS, while some differences in facial muscle activation did occur in comparison to NT/NT dyads. In the AS participants, in contrast, a high level of affiliation provided by the conversational partner was associated with increase in arousal, suggesting heightened alertness and stress. As for their own affiliative behavior, the AS participants exhibited similar indicators of alertness and stress as the NT participants, but only when their own level of dominance was low. Our results increase understanding of how individuals with AS experience social interaction at the physiological level, and how this experience differs from that in NT individuals. Moreover, our results confirm and further specify our earlier results, where we proposed that affiliation involves the type of “sharing of the burden” that also reverberates in the participants’ bodies.

Words have a weight: language as a source of inner grounding and flexibility in abstract concepts

“…For example, studies adopting these approaches directly investigate emotions in interactive contexts (Nummenmaa et al, 2012) both in neurotypical populations and other populations, e.g. individuals with an autism spectrum condition (Stevanovic et al, 2019). Because abstract concepts are more variable across contexts compared to concrete concepts, and because they are more strongly influenced by the social dimension, it is high time to take inspiration from other domains in order to start employing novel, interactive methods to investigate their use (Falandays & Spivey, 2019).…”

Multi‐speaker experimental designs: Methodological considerations

“…Indeed, different research groups have been focussing on the relationship between language use and physiological processes (see, e.g. Hardacre, 2020; Stevanovic et al., 2017, 2019, 2021), and even combining different techniques (e.g. eye tracking and electroencephalography (EEG): Hollenstein et al., 2018).…”

Physiological responses to proposals during dyadic decision-making conversations

“…In addition to describing the details of how various lexical, prosodic, and facial expression of emotion are embedded in, and regulated by, the sequential structures of social interaction, there have been attempts to consider the psychophysiological underpinnings of social interactional phenomena in a level of detail that has been unprecedented in the past [ 2 , 3 ]. This line of research has also opened a fresh avenue to also consider those asymmetries of interactions that may be attributed to participants’ specific clinical and neurological conditions, such as autism spectrum disorder [ 4 ]. This paper presents a contribution to this emerging line of research.…”

“…First, a set of studies has focused on how events of social interaction relate to an increase or decrease in the indicators of participants’ emotional arousal [ 2 , 3 , 12 – 14 ]. For example, focusing on storytelling and story reception, Peräkylä and colleagues [ 3 ] found that an increased level of affiliative story reception is associated with a decrease in the storyteller’s arousal and an increase in the story recipient’s arousal, as indicated in the participants’ SC response during the storytelling episodes (see also [ 4 ]). Second, there are studies on the momentary similarity (e.g., synchronicity or correlation) in the physiological changes in the participants interacting with each other [ 15 – 18 ].…”