Abstract
The present study examined interpersonal synchrony during psychological counseling, focusing on heart rate synchrony. In psychological counseling and psychotherapy, embodied synchrony is considered an important factor related to building rapport and empathy. Recent interpersonal synchrony/coordination studies have addressed this issue, not only at the behavioral level but also at the neurological (brain activity) and physiological (cardiac activity) levels. However, there is little known literature on heart rate synchrony in a psychological counseling context. Therefore, we conducted a single exploratory case study to ascertain whether heart rate synchrony was observed in a counseling session and how it related to therapeutic processes and psychological issues. One male university student and one male clinical psychologist participated in our experiment. The student had a counseling session for 50 minutes. Video data were recorded and two wearable sensors were attached to the chests of both participants to collect heart rate data. We applied nonlinear time series analyses, based on a recurrence analysis, to the heart rate data to quantitatively assess heart rate synchrony. A qualitative analysis was also conducted by three clinical psychologists, based on video data from the viewpoints of clinical psychology and psychotherapy. The results show that the heart rate synchrony between client and therapist was observed and changed dynamically during the session. The present study suggests that heart rate synchrony may occur in some clinically important scenes and reflect psychological factors (e.g., building rapport and empathy) and social relationships (e.g., leader-follower). The present study shows the applicability of recurrence-based analyses to complex heart rate data during psychological counseling, as explored in other interpersonal synchrony studies. Further examinations using more data from multiple viewpoints are expected to support our findings and cast light on the relationship between embodied synchrony and psychological issues in the context of psychological counseling and psychotherapy.
Highlights
One definition of synchrony is the dynamic and reciprocal adaptation of the temporal structure of behaviors between interactive partners (Delaherche et al, 2012)
The present study examined interpersonal synchrony during psychological counseling, focusing on heart rate synchrony
We conducted a single exploratory case study to ascertain whether heart rate synchrony was observed in a counseling session and how it related to therapeutic processes and psychological issues
Summary
One definition of synchrony is the dynamic and reciprocal adaptation of the temporal structure of behaviors between interactive partners (Delaherche et al, 2012) This type of interactive and interpersonal synchrony/coordination has been investigated within various research fields, including social psychology, clinical psychology, cognitive science, robotics (e.g., Bernieri & Rosenthal, 1991; Keller, Novembre, & Hove, 2014; Koole & Tschacher, 2016; Schmidt & Richardson, 2008; Wachsmuth, Lenzen, & Knoblich, 2008). One of the interesting points is that since brain and cardiac activities cannot be voluntarily controlled, these synchronized phenomena emerge spontaneously These activities show complex and interesting features in their time series, because they can be considered a self-organizing system having nonlinear interactions among their components at multiple time scales (e.g., Kelso, 1995; Richardson & Chemero, 2014; Sleimen-Malkoun, Temprado, & Hong, 2014)
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