Beyond Autism: Introducing the Dialectical Misattunement Hypothesis and a Bayesian Account of Intersubjectivity

“, 2016), but also more broadly to the disciplines of Neuroscience (Bolis et al., 2017), Philosophy (Chapman, 2019), Linguistics (Williams et al.”

“The “dialectical misattunement hypothesis” [5] understands ASD as a cumulation of wrongly attuned experiences between”

“Our approach is certainly sufficient to (i) provide a causal relationship between a neural signal of interest and a resulting behavior or (ii) inspire interventions aimed to augment or potentially restore learning (Bolis et al., 2017; Zhang et al., 2018; Redcay and Schilbach, 2019; Pan and Cheng, 2020).”

“It will be important for further work to better link behavioral characteristics with neural similarity rather than relying on diagnosis alone as individuals who are more similar may have more successful social interactions (Bolis et al., 2018; Cook, 2016).”

“Here, an interesting avenue for future research is predicting social behaviour in population groups with psychiatric conditions impeding self-other distinction, such as schizophrenia [46].”

“Recent research, however, has proposed a shift of focus from individual social traits toward the dynamic interaction between autistic individuals and their social partner(s), as social interaction difficulties cannot be holistically understood outside of the interactional context (Bolis et al., 2017; De Jaegher, 2013;…”

“ASC–ASC, ASC–typical, typical–typical) is encouraged (Bolis et al., 2017).”

“Rather, more consistent with relational accounts of autistic sociability (Milton, 2012; Bottema-Beutel, 2017; Bolis et al., 2018; Redcay and Schilbach, 2019), the dyadic combination of social abilities between diagnostic groups was more predictive of how autistic and NA adults evaluated (and were evaluated by) their p…”

“This is problematic, because clinical insight and preliminary empirical evidence point toward the need for an interactive and relational turn in autism research (cf. Gallagher, 2004; De Jaegher, 2013; Schilbach et al., 2013; Schilbach, 2016; Bolis et al., 2017; Milton et al., 2020).”

“The limitations of the aforementioned methods are thought to likely arise because of the ASD literature’s tendency of examining social (and/or cognitive) deficits as isolated and individual features and not by evaluating how they manifest in real-life contexts in which outcomes are influenced by relational dynamics as…”

“Recent approaches to the study of the mechanisms of social cognition propose that more interactive experimental protocols are crucial for understanding cognitive and social mechanisms elicited by social interaction 29–33 .”

“The dialectical misattunement hypothesis (Bolis et al., 2017) proposes that disturbances in the reciprocal unfolding of an interaction result in a change of the dyadic state, thus predicting a behavioral and neural difference between the two conditions employed in this study.”

“…a multiscale tracking of dyads and groups of interactors could even allow people to assess “whether and how interpersonal coordination in real-time social interactions might actually serve as a prior and modulate the need for inferences about hidden causes of social behavior” (Bolis et al., 2017).”

“Research shows that autistic interactions have particular characteristics and dynamics (Bolis et al., 2017; Crompton, Ropar, et al., 2020; De Jaegher, 2013; Heasman & Gillespie, 2019).”

“This is re fl ected in theoretical frameworks, such as the “ double empathy problem ” [65] as well as “ dialectic misattune-ment ” [66], specifying autistic impairments to be especially pronounced between people with fundamentally different ways of information processing and interacting.”

“Scientifically, as noted by Bolis et al. (2017), more ecologically valid approaches shift the comprehension of “healthy individuals” versus “patients” towards considerations of social interactions per se , taking hold among differently tuned individuals.”

“Other approaches have calculated ISCs to examine how people’s overall levels of particular traits or symptoms relate to their level of attunement with others (Bolis et al., 2017).”

“The network identified in this work is a prime candidate for such a self–other integrating network, as it contains regions linked to functions of segregation and integration of self and other, such as the temporoparietal junction, supramarginal gyrus and precuneus, as well as action– perception-related regions (Farrer…”

“Although most people agree with this conceptualisation of neuro-biological aetiology, amongst a variety of stakeholders, the preference for a biopsychosocial model with more emphasis on how social factors affect functioning and wellbeing, is increasing (Bolis et al., 2017; Greaves-Lord et al., 2022).”

“Camouflaging/IM could be more pervasive and taxing for autistic than non-autistic people given their neurodevelopmental differences in a world saturated by neurotypical social expectations (Ai et al., 2022; Bolis et al., 2017; Milton, 2012).”

“We have discussed how an interpersonal mismatch might make SMS challenging (Bolis et al., 2018).”

“We drew upon theories of Dialectical Misattunement and Double Empathy (Bolis et al., 2018; Milton, 2012), and literature suggesting matched-neurotype interactions feel more comfortable and connected than mixed-neurotype interactions (Crompton et al., 2020b, 2020c).”

“These multiphase configurations allow testing of key psychiatric phenomena, such as the misattunement hypothesis [66], with results suggesting that discrepancies in self-other representations make individuals more prone to developing paranoid explanations of social events [65].”

“This also implies some possibilities for breakdown and pathologies in psychological relationships due to misattunement in interpersonal resonance (Bolis et al., 2017).”

“The dialectical misattunement hypothesis is one approach that conceptualizes social psychopathology as dynamic interpersonal mismatches between dyads (Bolis et al., 2017).”

“Considering the results of this study, we suggest that while the ability and drive for social interaction may be intact in autism, the autism phenotype is better characterised by difficulties maintaining relationships with others because of a mismatch or “misattunement” in the communication and social-cognitive proces…”

“, 2012) and the dialectal misattunement hypothesis (Bolis et al., 2018) of autism.”

“This is reminiscent to the so-called "social interaction mismatch" hypothesis, which suggests that autistic persons find it easier to relate to other autistic persons [42,43].”

“The Bayesian account of intersubjectivity recently proposed by Bolis and Schilbach [241,242] is of particular interest for the scope of this work.”

“dictable social interactions might be different [20, 138], as well as evidencedisplayingdifferences in prediction errors of social cues in autism [139], it can be hypothesised that autistic traits are related to differences in the experience of social agency specifically.”

“…be less pronounced when two autistic people interact with each other, recent hyperscanning work compared INS between dyads that were either matched or mismatched in autistic-like traits (Bolis et al., 2017; Kruppa et al., 2021; Minagawa et al., 2023; Moreau et al., 2024; Schilbach & Redcay, 2025).”

“On this view, circular causality just is a form of reciprocal, downward and upward relations between parts and whole [(15); also see (17)].”

“This suggests that, rather than attributing social interaction problems only to deficits within the autistic individual, we should focus on the mismatch between interaction partners to explain social impairments (Bolis et al. 2017).”

“…this, the misattunement theory advocates that the social difficulties and communication breakdowns that autistic people encounter may result from a mismatch of communication styles and a mutual misunderstanding between autistic and non-autistic people (Bolis et al., 2017; Davis & Crompton, 2021).”

“to dialectics in psychology, there have still been several significant attempts to employ dialectical insights in developmental psychology (Riegel, 1977), in psychotherapy (Kaminstein, 1987), in neuroscience (Bolis & Schilbach, 2018), and in psychopathology (Bolis et al., 2017). The emergence of interest in the study…”

“From this perspective, paranoia may be influenced by cumulative misattunements or misalignments between people (for reference in autism, see Bolis et al., 2017) that contribute to poor social connection and poorer social relationships.”

“Furthermore, ASD was argued to specifically become apparent in alterations in interpersonal dynamics (i.e., during bidirectional information exchange) 118, 119 .”

“Skills are taught in isolation in a therapeutic context that may not incorporate outcomes influenced by relational dynamics (Bolis et al., 2017; Pasqualotto et al., 2021) or situational variables.”

“Marr’s levels-of-analysis framework 17 has been adopted in seminal theoretical papers to synthesize understanding of social cognition and emotion 18,20,23,184 , communication 21 , neurobiological processes 22,24 and psychiatric disorders 19 .”

“…the behaviour of disposition-matched dyads seems to us the most promising way to gain insights into what we might justifiably call an “autistic conversation style” (Bolis et al., 2017; Davis & Crompton, 2021; Milton, 2012; Mitch-ell et al., 2021; Rifai et al., 2022; Sheppard et al., 2016).”

“…et al. and Perrykkad & Hohwy 19 The ecological approach of Constant et al. (2018a) is complementary to the dialectical misattunement hypothesis (Bolis et al., 2017), embracing the intersubjectivist turn in cognitive science and autism research, and viewing ASD as a relational disorder, while…”

“…neu-rotypical and autistic individuals or the double empathy problem, i.e. the idea that social communication difficulties are not solely reliant on the autistic individual’s inherent social ability, but are also dependent on their neurotypical social partner (Bolis et al., 2017; Milton, 2012).”

“The idea of translating Bayesian predictive models to study two-person interactions at both the individual and collective levels, based on a dialectical mis-attunement hypothesis in autism, has been proposed (Bolis et al. , 2017).”

“…of a convergence of differing disciplines around issues with concepts derived from autistic scholars such as monotropism (interest models) or the double empathy problem (Milton, 2017) and enactivist or predictive-coding models applied to autism (Bolis et al., 2017; De Jaeger, 2020; Jurgens, 2020).”

“14 The current proposal is, thus, congenial with the distinction between ‘‘homogeneous’’ and ‘‘heterogeneous’’ dyads as a way of capturing different styles and forms of social interaction with persons with ASC, as well as different degrees of attunement (Bolis et al., 2017).”

“However, recent research suggests that social difficulties in autism are not only intrinsic to autistic individuals but are also relational (Bolis et al., 2018; Davis & Crompton, 2021; Milton, 2012) because autistic and non-autistic individuals have different communication and socio-cognitive…”

“Bolis et al. (2017) argue that this mismatch of interpersonal dynamics —‘dialectical misattunement’—underlies the social and communicative difficulties experienced by autistic people whereby repeated and reciprocal ‘misattunements’ over time lead to ‘increasing di-vergencies in communication styles…”

“Theories have pointed out different key aspects, but social, motor and sensory processes seem to be interconnected to a higher degree than previously thought (Bolis et al., 2017).”

“This approach likely draws on the social interaction mismatch hypothesis [23] and double empathy problem [24,25], which proposes that interpersonal dissimilarity can disrupt synchronization processes.”

“Building on Milton’s ideas, the dialogical misattunement hypothesis dismisses the idea that social difficulties in autism stem from ‘disordered’ autistic brains, but rather from a cumulative mismatch in the interpersonal dynamics between two people (Bolis et al., 2017).”

“Recognizing this, recent theories emphasize the need to situate autistic social interactions in the interpersonal context (Milton, 2012; De Jaegher, 2013; Bolis et al., 2017; Milton et al., 2020).”

“synchronization—or lack thereof—in clinical situations might be interpreted as a dialectical misattunement of coupled, dynamic systems (97,98).”

“In combination with experimental tasks that record psychophysiology from two interacting persons, these developments could help to increase our understanding of how to improve the relationship quality and efficacy of psychotherapeutic interventions in the future (Bolis et al., 2017).”

“Interpersonal predictive coding applies this logic to the social domain and focuses on how prior knowledge and resulting expectations help us to understand social interactions, during which the behavior of one person can help to anticipate what the interaction partner will do (Bolis et al., 2018; von der Lühe et al.,…”

“Similarly, the Dialectical Misattunement Hypothesis 31 (DMH) predicts that interactions are more synchronous and enjoyable when the interactants are more likely to predict each other’s actions, for example, due to a similar neurotype, experiences, and expectations.”

“They suggest taking ASC as a distinctive prediction and action mode instead of impaired brain function, which is shaped by the reciprocal influence between autistic people’s prediction styles and the mismatched interaction between autistic and neurotypical people (Bolis et al. 2017).”