Synchrony, pseudosynchrony, and dissynchrony: Measuring the entrainment process in mother-infant interactions.

We examined a new method for studying synchrony (i.e., the coordination of movement between individuals in social interactions) in two studies. Raters viewed video clips of interactions and judged the level of synchrony occurring between a mother and a 14-month-old child. Some of the video clips were genuine interactions, but most were pseudointeractions artificially constructed from the genuine interactions via split-screen editing techniques. For mothers interacting with their own children, genuine synchrony was significantly higher than pseudosynchrony, a difference that increased with time. When mothers interacted with an unfamiliar child, however, genuine synchrony was not higher than pseudosynchrony. In fact, mothers with unfamiliar children showed a state of dissynchrony (levels of genuine synchrony significantly lower than levels of pseudosynchrony). Our results suggest that synchrony can be reliably rated, thus allowing future investigations to include such measurements when studying social interaction processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)