Prior physical synchrony enhances rapport and inter-brain synchronization during subsequent educational communication

Takayuki Nozawa,Shigeyuki Ikeda,Hyeonjeong Jeong,Yoshihiro Miyake,Shohei Yamazaki,Kohei Sakaki,Natasha Yuriko Dos Santos Kawata,Kanan Hirano,Ryuta Kawashima,Yukako Sasaki,Kay Kulason,Kelssy Hitomi Dos Santos Kawata

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-49257-z

Takayuki Nozawa, Shigeyuki Ikeda + Show 10 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-49257-z

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Abstract

Physical synchrony has been suggested to have positive effects on not only concurrent but also subsequent communication, but the underlying neural processes are unclear. Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning, we tested the effects of preceding physical synchrony on subsequent dyadic teaching-learning communication. Thirty-two pairs of participants performed two experimental sessions. In each session, they underwent a rhythmic arm movement block with synchronous or asynchronous conditions, and then taught/learned unknown words to/from each other according to a given scenario. Neural activities in their medial and left lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) were measured and inter-brain synchronization (IBS) during the teaching-learning blocks was evaluated. Participants rated their subjective rapport during the teaching-learning blocks, and took a word memory test. The analyses revealed that (1) prior physical synchrony enhanced teacher-learner rapport; (2) prior physical synchrony also enhanced IBS in the lateral PFC; and (3) IBS changes correlated positively with rapport changes. Physical synchrony did however not affect word memory performance. These results suggest that IBS can be useful to measure the effects of social-bonding facilitation activities for educational communication.

Highlights

Physical synchrony has been suggested to have positive effects on concurrent and subsequent communication, but the underlying neural processes are unclear
These results suggest that the application of hyperscanning to the evaluation of inter-brain synchronization (IBS) in the field of educational communication is promising[41,42,43,44,45,46], especially to probe into the degree of harmonization in social affective and cognitive processes involved in the communication
Pairs of participants, provided with a story claiming that the study purpose was “to investigate the effect of embodied physical tempo on the succeeding learning process”, experienced incidental synchronous or asynchronous physical movement. They engaged in an educational communication where they taught and learned unknown words to/from each other. Their neural activities in the medial and left lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC), which are involved in internally and externally oriented cognitive functions, respectively[51,52,53], and whose activities have been shown to synchronize interpersonally during verbal communication[26,33,36], were measured using a two-channel portable wireless functional near-infrared spectroscopy device (Fig. 1b–d). functional nearinfrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) utilizes the link between changes in neuronal activities and cerebral blood flow and chromophore concentration, a mechanism known as neurovascular coupling54,55. fNIRS has the advantages of relatively high cost-effectiveness, tolerance to motion artefacts, and the localized nature of hemodynamic effects[55], which make it a promising application for education and other real-world communication

Summary

Introduction

Physical synchrony has been suggested to have positive effects on concurrent and subsequent communication, but the underlying neural processes are unclear. They underwent a rhythmic arm movement block with synchronous or asynchronous conditions, and taught/learned unknown words to/from each other according to a given scenario Neural activities in their medial and left lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) were measured and inter-brain synchronization (IBS) during the teaching-learning blocks was evaluated. Participants rated their subjective rapport during the teaching-learning blocks, and took a word memory test. Pairs of participants, provided with a story claiming that the study purpose was “to investigate the effect of embodied physical tempo on the succeeding learning process”, experienced incidental synchronous or asynchronous physical movement They engaged in an educational communication where they taught and learned unknown words to/from each other. After finishing the teaching-learning communication task in each session, participants rated the rapport they felt during the task, and completed a memory test about the taught/learned contents

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