ArticleDevelopmental science2026
Automated Quantification of Head Motion Synchrony in Peer Interactions of Autistic and Non-Autistic Youth.
Article in Developmental science, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Peer interactions take on increasing importance for youth in middle childhood and adolescence. Autistic youth face particular challenges interacting with non-autistic peers; thus, it is critical to understand factors that predict interaction enjoyment for autistic and non-autistic youth. One candidate predictor is interpersonal motion synchrony. Experimentally induced motion synchrony leads to interpersonal liking and closeness, but these outcomes from experimental synchrony may not generalize to synchrony that naturally occurs in interpersonal interactions. Computer vision approaches allow for non-invasive quantification of synchrony in developmental populations, and thus provide an opportunity to investigate the role of naturalistic motion synchrony in peer interactions between autistic and non-autistic youth. Autistic and non-autistic youth were paired into three dyad types (autistic with autistic, autistic with non-autistic, and non-autistic with non-autistic) and completed a brief video-recorded "getting-to-know-you" interaction. Head position was extracted frame-by-frame from video recordings using OpenPose. Cross-wavelet coherence was computed to quantify head motion synchrony. We found significant head motion synchrony in interacting (compared to time-scrambled) dyads, but levels of synchrony did not differ by dyad type. Across dyad types, we found evidence that head motion synchrony negatively predicts youth-reported enjoyment and positively predicts youth-reported discomfort in the interaction. Unlike prior findings of relations between synchrony and positive outcomes, here, synchrony predicted negative conversational outcomes. Thus, these findings add nuance to our understanding of the role of synchrony in naturalistic interactions. They also demonstrate the application of non-invasively quantifying synchrony in minimally structured peer interactions including autistic youth using computer vision.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.