Empathic Behavior and Behavioral Synchrony During Video Conversations in Autistic and Non-autistic Adolescents

Area of Science:

• Social interaction neuroscience
• Developmental psychology
• Autism spectrum disorder research

Background:

• Behavioral synchrony, particularly facial expression synchronization, facilitates empathic behavior.
• Autistic individuals often display atypical social and empathic behaviors.
• A need exists for ecological studies on synchrony and empathy in autistic adolescents.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate behavioral synchrony and empathic behaviors in autistic male adolescents during a video-based social interaction.
• To compare synchrony and empathy levels between autistic and non-autistic adolescents.
• To determine if emotion recognition abilities mediate observed differences.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a video-based platform for social interactions between male adolescents and a non-autistic confederate.
• Included conversational and discouragement scenarios to elicit socio-emotional responses.
• Assessed behaviors using trained raters and automated facial expression analysis.

Main Results:

• Autistic adolescents demonstrated significantly reduced behavioral synchrony compared to non-autistic peers.
• Fewer empathic behaviors were observed in interactions involving autistic adolescents.
• Emotion recognition capabilities did not explain the observed differences in synchrony or empathy.

Conclusions:

• Behavioral synchrony plays a critical role in the social interaction challenges experienced by autistic adolescents.
• Reduced synchrony may underlie some of the social disparities observed in autism.
• Findings highlight the importance of targeting synchrony in interventions for autistic youth.