To help the reader envision these participants and their engagement in the mirroring activities, a short narrative summary of the movement and social engagement patterns of each participant is provided here. This should help the reader understand how the overall picture of the individual may contribute to the patterns of similarities and differences between the cases. In order to give a concise picture of the individual, these narratives combine some demographic background information, descriptions of the participant’s patterns of participation, and salient themes from the qualitative data. A full analysis of each case can be found in Appendices E to I. Overall, the participants tended to adhere to the instructions for the movement tasks, but showed different patterns of engagement in the different mirroring activities. The participants each had their own style of dancing, had varying degrees of motor challenges, and seemed more interested in engaging with some partners than with others. The participants all engaged in responsive behaviors for very short periods of time only: displaying brief sequences of actions or attentional changes in response to input from the partner or the environment, and then returning to their previous state.
4.6.1 Hans
Hans was a 42 year-old white male who was receiving job skills training and living with others in his job skills program. He attended all 10 weeks of the therapy, with video available for 8 of these sessions. Hans was generally willing to participate in the mirroring task but not very emotionally engaged. When encouraged by a skilled partner, he did sometimes smile and engage for short periods of time. He acted differently in the different roles: he was more attentive to his partner when following, regularly distracted when leading, and at times faced away and
show that, at his best moments, he could be both emotionally engaged and could use movement responsively.
Hans was partnered with the same research assistant (RA) for five weeks. This RA was a female DMT student who several times led a simple playful movement theme involving opening and closing their hands at various tempos. Hans laughed and engaged when she did this, and many of their most successful interactions occurred when she led variations on this movement theme. Hans had to pay close attention to her sudden changes in tempo and direction. By the last session, Hans seemed to incorporate some of his partner’s style into his own leading seeming to himself attempt to challenge his partner.
4.6.2 Karl
Karl was a 21 year-old white male in a program that provided him with job skills training and housing. Karl’s attention, social engagement, and even his commitment to the movement task itself seemed to vary by the week, partner, and activity. Karl usually attempted to follow everything his partner did, but was not always successful. When he was more active, his own movements could be uncoordinated and challenging to follow. When he was leading and during the open dance segments, he was frequently less attentive to his partner and sometimes looked or turned away.
Karl already knew many of the participants in his group from other programing at this location. Some of these other participants interacted with each other during the DMT sessions and appeared to be friends. Karl appeared to want to be part of this group of friends, although they did not approach him as frequently as he approached them. When Karl was partnered with one of these participants, he imitated and initiated some of their playfully aggressive behaviors (such as poking each other). While he himself initiated some simple movement-based
interactions with these individuals, their exchanges tended to be very brief and did not develop into anything beyond a short back-and-forth on a single movement theme. Attention and certain
movement qualities seemed to improve his motor coordination and engagement: he sometimes appeared better coordinated when he was more attentive, and he seemed more engaged and focused on the movement and his partner when he was doing direct (and at times playfully aggressive) movements toward his partner.
4.6.3 Lukas
Lukas was a 14 year-old male who lived with his family. He had previously attended some other programing at this location. There was video for all nine sessions he attended. He was partnered with a RA in week nine, and in the other eight sessions, he was partnered with other participants with ASD. In almost all of the videos, Lukas appeared to be strictly focused on the task. He showed very few facial expressions and generally seemed emotionally disconnected from his partners. The raters noted that while he did not seem to dislike having partners, he just did not appear to be particularly interested in them. A few times, Lukas did use touch and short verbalizations to instruct his partners. When it was his turn to follow, Lukas mirrored his partners’ movements quite precisely. Lukas seemed to enjoy dancing and often used large movements with sudden switches between steps. He may have slowed down and simplified his movements slightly for some of his (less motorically skilled) partners, but it is not clear if this was intentional, and, in any case, he did not communicate this supportive intention directly to his partners. He used similar movements throughout the sessions, but his movements did increase in size and energy over the first several weeks.
4.6.4 Julia
Julia was a 26 year-old white female. Unlike some of the other members of her group, Julia came to this site only for these DMT groups. She attended nine weeks of therapy and video was available for four of these sessions. Julia was a willing participant in all of the DMT group activities. In general, Julia appeared to enjoy dancing, varied her movements, and matched her dancing to the music across a range of tempos. She appeared to be more interested in dancing
than in interacting. During the open-ended dance segments, she rarely looked at her partner and often appeared to be in her own world. In the leading segments, she generally led her partners through a variety of rapidly changing movements without looking at, or engaging with, her partners. When following her partners, she adeptly followed any of a large variety of movements, even when her partners led relatively unpredictable movements or did not have a consistent rhythm to their dancing. Her best interactions tended to occur when she was following her partner.
4.6.5 Anna
Anna was an 18 year-old white female in a job skills training program and she was living with others in this program. Anna attended five sessions with video available for four of the sessions. Anna was partnered once with Hans, twice with RA partners, and once with another participant with ASD whom she was dating. Anna had very different levels of engagement with each partner. Her attention to each partner varied, she sometimes stopped mirroring, and she often disengaged from her partners during the open-ended dance. She was the most consistently attentive and engaged with the partner whom she was dating, although they did not always adhere to the instructions of the mirroring activity. Anna generally led a series of quick gestures with her arms with “conventional” meanings such as actions from sports or everyday activities. She regularly stopped leading to think about the next movement, and sometimes engaged in repetitive, sensory seeking movements that got in the way of her completing the tasks and engaging with her partners. Anna and her partners all appeared to recognize these repetitive, sensory seeking movements as separate from the mirroring activity, and her partners usually waited for her to finish before following her next action.