Conversationally Attuned: Links Between Interpersonal Linguistic Synchrony and Social Functioning Across the...

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Clinical Psychology
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Social dysfunction and language abnormalities are key features of psychotic disorders.
• Existing language studies in psychosis often overlook the broader discourse, focusing only on participant speech.
• Language style matching (LSM), or aligning language with conversation partners, is a natural human interaction process.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the relationship between language style matching (LSM) and social functioning in individuals with early psychosis spectrum disorders.
• To determine if LSM during social interactions can predict real-world social functioning.
• To explore LSM as a potential biomarker for social difficulties in psychosis.

Main Methods:

• 101 participants (early psychosis, high schizotypy, unaffected controls) completed a social interaction task and social functioning assessment.
• Audio recordings of participant-examiner dyads were transcribed for LSM analysis.
• Correlations and hierarchical regression analyses examined associations between LSM, task performance, and social functioning.

Main Results:

• LSM positively correlated with real-world social functioning and task performance in early psychosis participants.
• LSM was also linked to real-world social functioning in unaffected controls, but not in high schizotypy individuals.
• LSM explained additional variance in social functioning beyond task performance and clinical/demographic factors.

Conclusions:

• Preliminary evidence suggests LSM during interpersonal interaction is associated with social dysfunction.
• LSM may capture interactional and social outcome features missed by standard assessments.
• Conversational exchange analysis, including LSM, shows promise for assessing social dysfunction in emerging adults with psychosis spectrum disorders.