Examining interpersonal biobehavioral synchrony as a measure of social reciprocity and emotion regulation in parent-child dyads with and without autism using an interactive smart toy platform
Although difficulties in social-emotional reciprocity are part of the core diagnostic criteria for autism and decades of research has focused on etiological and developmental trajectories of these deficits, current scholarship generally evaluates a child solely as an individual, rather than within his or her transactional social system. The current study established a novel experimental paradigm for multi-modal data collection and interpersonal physiological analysis that allows systematic testing of hypotheses about mechanistic underpinnings of social reciprocity and emotional regulation in typical and atypical development. Continued analyses of these synergistic dynamics may reveal fundamental mechanisms relating to how the social brain typically develops and how it may be altered in autism.