Renjaän, David

The Dynamics of Interpersonal Synchrony During Dyadic Interactions: A Lifespan perspective.

Interpersonal synchrony is the rhythmic and temporal coordination of behaviours, emotions, and physiological processes that spontaneously occurs between two (or more) interacting individuals. It entails that, during social interactions, individuals tend to show similar behaviours, emotions, and/ or physiological activity simultaneously across time. Although research underscores the importance of synchrony for socio-emotional development, the exact developmental function of synchrony across primary relationships throughout life is relatively unknown. This Ph.D. project aims at contributing to clarifying this, specifically in the context of dyadic emotional situations. Adopting a developmental view, a conceptual model of synchrony across the lifespan will be developed and empirically examined in several (longitudinal) studies.