Micro-process analysis: Innovative Moments and physiological synchronization.

The growing field of study on physiological synchronization shows that co-regulation of patient’s and therapist’s autonomic activity is associated to desirable relationship traits such as empathy and clinical alliance. Few studies, though, have investigated the link between physiological synchronization and precise therapy process markers. Among various instruments developed to rate the therapy content, the Innovative Moments Coding System (IMCS) identifies exceptionalinstancesof the therapeutic dialog in which thepatient’sproblems are narrated in novel ways. These markers of meaning transformation are associated with change in different models of therapy anddiverse diagnoses. In the present study we present the first exploration of the physiological correlates of Innovative Moments markers. In detail, we video recorded a 16-sessions psychodynamic therapy collecting simultaneous skin conductance in patient and therapist. Physiological synchronization was assessed through Adaptive Matching Interpolated Correlation analyses, and the transcripts were coded through the IMCS. We present quantitative and qualitative analyses showing the associations between different IMCS codes and physiological dynamics. We aim to show how physiology (both individual signals and the dyadic synchronization), session transcripts, and Innovative Moments codes can be meaningfully combined. We argue that these types of data representation and analyses, integrating objective and subjective measures, can offer powerful insights for the study of the therapeutic process at a micro level.