Preserved Spontaneous Interpersonal Entrainment during Rhythmic Synchronization in Autism Spectrum Disorder
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Purpose
Interpersonal entrainment, defined as the tendency of interacting individuals to temporally align their behaviours, is considered a key mechanism supporting social interactions through predictive and multisensory processes. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), characterized by social and communication difficulties, has been associated with atypical predictive and multisensory integration processes, which may affect spontaneous entrainment to other’s actions during rhythmic interactions.
Methods
The present study investigated spontaneous interpersonal entrainment in 24 autistic and 22 neurotypical young adults using a unidirectional adaptation of the drifting metronomes paradigm developed by Rosso et al. (2021). Participants synchronized their finger tapping with an auditory metronome while either seeing or not seeing a partner’s hand movements performing the same task at a slightly different tempo. Individual synchronization performance was assessed using asynchrony measures and computational modelling of sensorimotor synchronization, while interpersonal coordination dynamics were quantified using joint recurrence analysis.
Results
Visual exposure to the partner’s hand movements significantly increased tapping variability while simultaneously enhancing spontaneous interpersonal entrainment. Contrary to previous findings, these effects were comparable across groups, suggesting similar sensitivity to spontaneous low-level interpersonal coupling under stable and predictable conditions.
Conclusion
Overall, the findings support accounts proposing selective rather than generalized atypicalities in predictive processing and interpersonal entrainment in ASD.
