Automatic mimicry detection in medical consultations

Good communication and rapport between patients and doctors is important to achieve positive health outcomes. Mimicry, when a person copies the behavior of someone else, has been related to good communication and building rapport. We develop a method to automatically detect non-verbal mimicry and study the relationship between mimicry and the perceived quality of the interaction. Automating the detection of mimicry is important since it may be a proxy for empathy and perspective taking, both features of high quality interactions for caring professions. This pilot study involved 91 sessions between medical students and volunteers acting as patients. The results confirm a correlation between our measure of mimicry and the assessed quality of the interaction. Therefore, medical students may improve their communication skills by practicing behavioural mimicry.