Ongoing (IV): Recruitment and data collection completed, but data quality management ongoing
Interpersonal synchrony (IPS) is attenuated in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), yet little is known whether this reduction stems from issues of motor production, perception of timing of others' behaviors, or both. Neuroimaging evidence demonstrates differentiated neural activation patterns of synchronous vs. asynchronous behaviors in healthy adults (Cacioppo et al., 2014; Georgescu et al., 2013). Given that IPS is reduced in ASD, we do not yet know how such (a)synchronous interactions are perceptually processed by individuals with ASD when observing and involved in interactions, as well as whether any problems in perceiving interactional synchrony might be related to the general time perception deviances described in the literature (Falter et al., 2012a; Falter et al., 2012b; Falter et al., 2013; Isaakson et al., 2018; Lambrechts et al., 2018; Menassa et al., 2018). Consequently, the proposed study aims to investigate i) how individuals with ASD process interpersonal (a)synchrony both when they are part of interactions as well as when they observe interactions and ii) whether IPS processing is related to the general disturbance in temporal processing. We will employ two fMRI (INTERACTION, OBSERVATION) tasks and two behavioral tasks (CONVERSATION, NONSOCIAL) to establish whether reduced IPS stems from perceptual deficits. A significant advantage of the present study includes being able to link the tasks across a single participant. Therefore, we will also be able to relate the neural signature of perceived synchrony to produced synchrony in the same individuals. The results of the study will clarify the extent to which attenuated synchrony stems from perceptual deficits, production deficits, or a combination of both.