Social motor synchrony in autism spectrum conditions: A systematic review

When two people interact, they often fall into sync with one another by moving their bodies at the same time. Some say autistic people are not as good as non-autistic people at moving at the same time as a partner. This has led some researchers to ask whether measuring synchrony might help diagnose autism. We reviewed the research so far to look at differences in Social Motor Synchrony (SMS) (the way we move together) between autistic people and people they interact with. The research suggests that interactions involving an autistic partner (either two autistic partners, or an autistic and non-autistic partner) show lower synchrony than a non-autistic pair. However, we recognised elements in the research so far that may have affected SMS in interactions involving an autistic person. One way SMS may have been affected in research so far might be the way interactions have been set up in the research studies. Few papers studied interactions between two autistic people or looked at synchrony in comfortable environments with autistic-preferred tasks. The studies also do not explain why synchrony might be different, or weaker, in pairs involving autistic partners. We use these limitations to suggest improvements for future research.