Physiological synchrony during meaningful moments of interaction: An exploratory study

Background: The idiosyncratic ways of communication of people with profound intellectual disabilities complicate meaningful interactions between them and support staff. A physiological explication of their interplay may help to better understand meaningful contact.

Method: Five staff-client-dyads were filmed during dyadic interactions, while their heart rate (HR) and electrodermal activity (EDA) were measured. HR and EDA synchrony were explored via Cross Recurrence Quantification analyses (CRQA), and the associations between physiological synchrony and meaningfulness as experienced by support staff were investigated.

Results: In the five dyads, HR synchrony was high, while EDA synchrony differed between dyads. The association between HR and/or EDA synchrony and experienced meaningfulness showed inconsistent patterns across dyads and yielded weak, non-significant pooled correlations in the meta-analytic analyses.

Conclusion: The association between physiological synchrony and meaningfulness was neither confirmed nor rejected. Follow-up research is needed to find out whether these physiological measures can be applied to quantify experienced meaningfulness.