Tay Dennis, Qiu Han
Department of English and Communication, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China.
Front Psychol. 2022 May 23;13:903227. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.903227. eCollection 2022.
Interpersonal synchrony is the alignment of responses between social interactants, and is linked to positive outcomes including cooperative behavior, affiliation, and compassion in different social contexts. Language is noted as a key aspect of interpersonal synchrony, but different strands of existing work on linguistic (a)synchrony tends to be methodologically polarized. We introduce a more complementary approach to model linguistic (a)synchrony that is applicable across different interactional contexts, using psychotherapy talk as a case study. We define linguistic synchrony as similarity between linguistic choices that reflect therapists and clients' socio-psychological stances. Our approach involves (i) computing linguistic variables per session, (ii) k-means cluster analysis to derive a global synchrony measure per dyad, and (iii) qualitative analysis of sample extracts from each dyad. This is demonstrated on sample dyads from psychoanalysis, cognitive-behavioral, and humanistic therapy. The resulting synchrony measures reflect the general philosophy of these therapy types, while further qualitative analyses reveal how (a)synchrony is contextually co-constructed. Our approach provides a systematic and replicable tool for research and self-reflection in psychotherapy and other types of purposive dialogic interaction, on more representative and limited datasets alike.
人际同步是社会互动者之间反应的协调一致，并且在不同社会情境中与包括合作行为、归属感和同情心在内的积极结果相关联。语言被视为人际同步的一个关键方面，但现有的关于语言（非）同步的不同研究倾向于在方法论上两极分化。我们引入一种更具互补性的方法来建模语言（非）同步，该方法适用于不同的互动情境，并以心理治疗对话作为案例研究。我们将语言同步定义为反映治疗师和来访者社会心理立场的语言选择之间的相似性。我们的方法包括：（i）计算每个会话的语言变量；（ii）进行k均值聚类分析以得出每个二元组的全局同步度量；（iii）对每个二元组的样本摘录进行定性分析。这在来自精神分析、认知行为疗法和人本主义疗法的样本二元组上得到了证明。由此产生的同步度量反映了这些治疗类型的总体理念，而进一步的定性分析揭示了（非）同步是如何在情境中共同构建的。我们的方法为心理治疗和其他类型的有目的对话互动中的研究和自我反思提供了一种系统且可重复的工具，无论是对于更具代表性还是有限的数据集都是如此。
