The Body Speaks: Using the Mirror Game to Link Attachment and Non-verbal Behavior

The Mirror Game (MG) is a common exercise in dance/movement therapy and drama therapy. It is used to promote participants’ ability to enter and remain in a state of togetherness. In spite of the wide use of the MG by practitioners, it is only recently that scientists begun to use the MG in research, examining its correlates, validity, and reliability. This study joins this effort by reporting on the identification of scale items to describe the non-verbal behavior expressed during the MG and its correlation to measures of attachment. Thus, we explored the application of the MG as a tool for assessing the embodiment of attachment in adulthood. Forty-eight participants (22 females, mean age = 33.2) played the MG with the same gender-matched expert players. All MG were videotaped. In addition, participants were evaluated on two central measurements of attachment in adulthood: The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) and the Experience in Close Relationship questionnaire (ECR). To analyze the data, we developed the “MG scale” that coded the non-verbal behavior during the movement interaction, using 19 parameters. The sub-scales were reduced using factor analysis into two dimensions referred to as “together” and “free.” The free factor was significantly correlated to both measurements of attachment: Participants classified as having secure attachment on the AAI, received higher scores on the MG free factor than participants classified as insecure [t(46) = 7.858, p = 0.000]. Participants, who were high on the avoidance dimension on the ECR, were low on the MG free factor [r(48) = −0.285, p = 0.007]. This is the first study to examine the MG as it is used by practitioners and its correlation to highly standardized measures. This exploratory study may be considered as part of the first steps of exploring the MG as a standardized assessment tool. The advantages of the MG as a simple, non-verbal movement interaction demonstrate some of the strengths of dance/movement and drama therapy practice

Integrative systematic review of psychodrama psychotherapy research: Trends and methodological implications.

BackgroundPsychodrama is an experiential psychotherapy in which guided role-play is used to gain insights and work on personal and interpersonal problems and possible solutions. Despite the wealth of literature describing clinical work, psychodrama intervention research is relatively scarce compared to other psychotherapies and psychological interventions.ObjectiveFor this reason we implemented the integrative approach to systematic review that authorizes the combination of publications with diverse methodologies and all types of participants, interventions, comparisons, and outcomes. Our aim was to produce a comprehensive summary of psychodrama intervention research in the last decade that critically evaluates methodological issues to inform future studies.MethodsWe searched four major electronic databases (PsycINFO, PubMEd, Scopus by Elsevier, and Web of Science) for peer-reviewed articles on psychodrama interventions published in English between 1 January 2007 and 31 December 2017. The quality of qualitative and mixed methods studies was assessed on the basis of pre-established guidelines, and the risk of bias was assessed for all quantitative randomized control studies, consistent with the PRISMA protocol.FindingsThe database search and a hand search resulted in 31 psychodrama intervention publications. Overall, these studies examined the effects of psychodrama on more than 20 different outcomes and most studies had adult clients. The next largest group was adolescents, whereas only two studies involved children. Thus psychodrama intervention research in the last decade suggests there are promising results in all methodologies, and highlights the need to enhance methodological as well as reporting quality and to theorize and examine modality-specific mechanisms that lead to therapeutic change. Recommendations to improve methodology, transparency, and specificity in reporting future psychodrama and other psychotherapy research are discussed

Measurements of Play and Playfulness in Adults

A review of instruments, tools and measurements of play and playfulness in adults that can be utilized as process measures in psychotherapy

Relationship Aspects of Mothers and Their Adolescents with Intellectual Disability as Expressed through the Joint Painting Procedure

The quality of the interaction between mothers and their children with an Intellectual Disability (ID) plays a crucial role in their development and in particular during adolescence. This qualitative study was designed to provide a better understanding of aspects of the relationships between mothers and their adolescents with ID through an art-based tool, the Joint Painting Procedure. The qualitative analysis of six dyads of mothers and adolescents with severe, moderate and mild ID was based on the principles of narrative and phenomenological inquiry. The findings yielded three key themes that emerged from the relational dynamics during the JPP: (1) from dependency to autonomy, (2) the joint painting as a way to foster verbal communication, and (3) playfulness and enjoyment. The JPP appeared to serve as a meaningful art-based assessment of the implicit and explicit aspects of the relationships which evolved during the interaction. The findings underscore the potential of the JPP as a non-verbal, art-based tool that allows researchers and clinicians to learn more about the dynamics of relationships between mothers and their adolescents with ID. It also enables a context where the expression of relational issues can be communicated and even transformed

Working Through Attachment Relationships to Improve Quality of Life for People with an Intellectual Disability:Clinical discussion panel

Intellectual disability (ID) primarily affects social adaptive behavior, which in some cases may deteriorate into endangerment of self and others. People with ID are as a result overrepresented in residential settings for youth mental health care, prisons, and care homes. The regimen in many of these settings may involve the use of behavioral, pharmacological, and mechanical restraints, or seclusion. This panel brings together clinical researchers and practitioners to discuss how insights from attachment theory and research may be employed to reduce such practices, improve quality of life, and promote adaptive development. Key questions to be discussed by the panel and with the audience are: (a) how may attachment-based interventions make restraints and seclusion obsolete?; (b) how may family carers and professionals be supported in building high quality relationships with people with ID?; (c) what are clinical research priorities in this field and how should these be pursued

Individuality and togetherness in joint improvised motion.

Actors, dancers and musicians that improvise together report special moments of togetherness: high performance and synchrony, seemingly without a leader and a follower. Togetherness seems to conflict with individuality- the idiosyncratic character of each person's performance. To understand the relation of individuality and togetherness, we employed the mirror game paradigm in which two players are asked to mirror each other and create interesting synchronized motion, with and without a designated leader. The mirror game enables quantitative characterization of moments of togetherness in which complex motion is generated with high synchrony. We find that each person as a leader does basic strokes of motion with a characteristic signature, in terms of the shape of their velocity profile between two stopping events. In moments of togetherness both players change their signature to a universal stroke shape. This universal velocity profile resembles a half-period of a sine wave, and is therefore symmetric and maximally smooth. Thus, instead of converging to an intermediate motion signature, or having one player dominate, players seem to shift their basic motion signatures to a shape that is altogether different from their individually preferred shapes; the resulting motion may be easier to predict and to agree on. The players then build complex motion by using such smooth elementary strokes

Joint improvised motion in the mirror game was analyzed in terms of elementary motion events called segments.

<p>(A) In the one dimensional mirror game players move handles along parallel tracks, and motion is tracked. Lights indicate type of round: red leads, blue leads or no designated leader. (B) Examples of velocity traces from two different games. Red trace marks the red player and blue trace marks the blue player. All traces are taken from rounds with no designated leader. Notice the high synchronization of the motion in both cases and its relative complexity. (C) A motion segment is defined as the velocity trace between two consecutive zero velocity points. The shape of segment velocity traces is characterized by two parameters: skewness – the shift to the left or right, and kurtosis – the relative weight on the curve ‘shoulders’. Throughout the paper each segment is described as a point in this two-dimensional low-level motion parameter plane. The segment characteristics of each player are described by an ellipse whose center is the mean and its axes are the standard deviation (error bars) of the skewness and kurtosis values.</p

The universal co-confident segments are symmetric and smooth.

<p>Co-confident segments (green ellipses) cluster around kurtosis and skewness values similar to the minimal jerk solution for periodic motion (the trace which minimizes the integral over the acceleration change squared, resembles a half-sine wave). The characteristic of the half-sine wave lie in the center of the co-confident region in segment shape space. For comparison, a Gaussian trace, with kurtosis computed as 3, is shown far from the observed motion. Insets: pure Gaussian and half-sine traces and two examples of traces from the dataset.</p

Players meet at a universal region of motion space when in togetherness, instead of meeting at their mean motion.

<p>Schematics of three possible hypotheses: (A) Hypothesis One: One player mimics the other players' segment signature during co-confident motion. (B) Hypothesis Two: Both players tune their signatures and meet, during co-confident motion, at an intermediate position in segment shape space. Meeting region is different for each game and depends on both players' signatures. (C) Hypothesis Three: All players tune their signatures to meet at a universal region of the segment shape space. Co-confident motion region is common to all games. This describes the present findings.</p