Timing of nonverbal patient-therapist interactions and treatment outcome in patients with social phobia

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Bernhard Strauß
• Subject Area: Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology
• Term: from 2015 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 272792856

The timing of nonverbal behavior of patient and therapist seems to be associated with therapy outcome. Within the project funded by the DFG, we found some indications for a positive association between a high level of movement synchrony and therapy success. In the future, we want to focus paraverbal variables which might be more closely related to emotions than body movements. It is assumed that paraverbal characteristics (fundamental frequency, speech rate) are associated with self-ratings of anxiety and treatment. In addition, treatment outcome should be correlated with paraverbal timing (i.e., synchrony of paraverbal characteristics of patient and therapists) among patients with social anxiety disorder. Moreover, it will be tested if these correlations are similar within a manulized short term cognitive behavioral therapy and a manulized psychodynamic oriented short-term therapy. Paraverbal synchrony will be determined based upon the fundamental frequency and speech rate. Additionally, measures of therapist leading and pacing are identified. We will use a semi-automatic analysis consisting of manual annotation, pre-processing and transcript-based determination of the parameters using the software Praat. The continuation of the project including paraverbal variables could increase our knowledge related to patient-therapist-interactions, the structure of treatment processes and the interplay of several nonverbal patient-therapist interactions and treatment outcome based upon a multimodal analysis of nonverbal timing.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Switzerland
• Cooperation Partners: Privatdozent Dr. Fabian Ramseyer; Professor Dr. Ulrich Stangier; Professor Dr. Wolfgang Tschacher
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Uwe Altmann