The effects of interaction quality on neural synchrony during mother-child problem solving

Trinh Nguyen,Hanna Schleihauf,Ezgi Kayhan,Daniel Matthes,Pascal Vrtička,Stefanie Hoehl

doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2019.11.020

Abstract

Understanding others is fundamental to interpersonal coordination and successful cooperation. One mechanism posited to underlie both effective communication and behavioral coordination is interpersonal neural synchrony. Although presumably foundational for children's social development, research on neural synchrony in naturalistic caregiver-child interactions is lacking. Using dual-functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), we examined the effects of interaction quality on neural synchrony during a problem-solving task in 42 dyads of mothers and their preschool children. In a cooperation condition, mothers and children were instructed to solve a tangram puzzle together. In an individual condition, mothers and children performed the same task alone with an opaque screen between them. Wavelet transform coherence (WTC) was used to assess the cross-correlation between the two fNIRS time series. Results revealed increased neural synchrony in bilateral prefrontal cortex and temporo-parietal areas during cooperative as compared to individual problem solving. Higher neural synchrony during cooperation correlated with higher behavioral reciprocity and neural synchrony predicted the dyad's problem-solving success beyond reciprocal behavior between mothers and children. State-like factors, such as maternal stress and child agency during the task, played a bigger role for neural synchronization than trait-like factors, such as child temperament. Our results emphasize neural synchrony as a biomarker for mother-child interaction quality. These findings further highlight the role of state-like factors in interpersonal synchronization processes linked to successful coordination with others and in the long-term might improve the understanding of others.

Highlights

Mutual attunement of behavior and physiology between children and caregivers is thought to play a vital role for both attachment and the development of social and emotional competences (Atzil & Gendron, 2017; Stern, 1985)
We aimed to clarify the relation between interaction quality and neural synchrony during a naturalistic caregiver-child interaction involving cooperative problem solving
By concentrating on interaction quality and individual differences in the functioning of the caregiving system in the mother as well as temperament in the child, our goal was to measure how such dyadic and individual differences would be related to neurobehavioral synchronization during induced cortex 1 2 4 ( 2 0 2 0 ) 2 3 5 e2 4 9 cooperation

Summary

Introduction

Mutual attunement of behavior and physiology between children and caregivers is thought to play a vital role for both attachment and the development of social and emotional competences (Atzil & Gendron, 2017; Stern, 1985). Findings from social neuroscience research suggest that neural synchrony facilitates the coordination of behavior and predicts cooperative task performance in adult-infant and parent-child interactions (Leong et al, 2017; Miller et al, 2019; Reindl, Gerloff, Scharke, & Konrad, 2018), corroborating findings from previous research in adults (Baker et al, 2016; Liu et al, 2016). Social interactions in these studies were, highly controlled due to the use of simplified and artificial tasks and did not require elaborate perspectivetaking or communication. Few studies have examined caregiverchild interactions at preschool age when the child moves beyond the dependency experienced during infancy and toddlerhood towards greater agency (Harrist & Waugh, 2002)

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