Social motor synchrony and interactive rapport in autistic, non-autistic, and mixed-neurotype dyads.
Autistic people may bond without matching your moves, so look beyond body mirroring to gauge real connection.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team watched pairs of adults talk and move.
Some pairs were both autistic, some were both non-autistic, and some were mixed.
Tiny motion trackers measured how well their body rhythms matched.
After the chat each person rated how much they liked their partner.
What they found
Non-autistic pairs felt closer when their movements synced.
For autistic pairs, syncing barely mattered for liking.
Mixed pairs landed in the middle: some sync helped, but not as much as in the non-autistic pairs.
In short, motor mirroring is not the main road to rapport for autistic adults.
How this fits with other research
Glass et al. (2023) saw the same weak sync in autistic-involved pairs across many older lab tasks.
Granieri et al. (2020) also found that autistic adults rated their time with non-autistic partners more harshly, yet still preferred autistic partners—matching the idea that rapport rules differ by neurotype.
Dvir et al. (2025) looked like a contradiction at first: they boosted sync with a dance-like game and saw more cooperation among autistic young adults.
The key difference is intervention versus free talk: when you force rhythmic movement it can lift later teamwork, but in everyday chat autistic people simply do not lean on body matching to feel connected.
Why it matters
Do not assume a client is disinterested just because their rocking or gestures do not copy yours.
Probe other rapport builders—shared interests, clear language, or parallel play.
If you run social groups, add structure (music, games) when you want sync; skip the pressure to mirror during casual conversation.
Get CEUs on This Topic — Free
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ on-demand CEUs including ethics, supervision, and clinical topics like this one. Plus a new live CEU every Wednesday.
In your next peer group, note each participant’s preferred rapport cue—shared topic, humor, or joint activity—instead of prompting mimicry.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
During social interactions, people often mirror each other's movements and gestures, a process called synchrony. This synchrony helps foster a sense of connection, understanding, and ease in communication. While research suggests that autistic people may show less synchrony in their movements compared to non-autistic people, the implications of this difference for building rapport remain unclear. Specifically, it is unknown whether synchrony plays a similar role in rapport-building for autistic individuals as it does for non-autistic individuals, particularly in interactions with autistic versus non-autistic partners. This study had three goals to investigate whether synchrony is lower in conversations involving at least one autistic person; to explore the relationship between synchrony and rapport; and to compare how much autistic and non-autistic people rely on synchrony to feel connected. The findings suggest that while synchrony positively influences rapport more strongly in non-autistic interactions, autistic individuals may rely less on synchrony for rapport. These results highlight differences in how social connection is built, offering deeper insight into social interactions for autistic and non-autistic people.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2025 · doi:10.1177/13623613251319585