Parental neural responsivity to infants’ visual attention: How mature brains influence immature brains during social interaction

Wass, Sam; Noreika, Valdas; Georgieva, Stanimira; Clackson, Kaili; Brightman, Laura; Nutbrown, Rebecca; Santamaría, Lorena; Leong, Victoria

doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.2006328

Cited by 112 publications

(159 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…Information that parents communicate during oscillatory misalignment with their infant is attenuated. In this case, interpersonal neural connectivity levels therefore broadly indicate the degree of joint attention between parent and child, which is consistent with previous work (24,26). This view is a logical extension of current models of (individual) attention, which propose that neuronal oscillations act as a mechanism for attentional selection (27).…”

Section: Mechanistic Effect Of Interpersonal Dyadic Connectivity On Ssupporting

confidence: 89%

Mother-infant interpersonal neural connectivity predicts infants’ social learning

Leong¹,

Noreika²,

Clackson³

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Social learning allows infants to learn vicariously by observing adult behaviour, but how the infant brain accomplishes this feat remains unknown. Here, electroencephalography (EEG) signals were simultaneously measured from forty-seven mothers and infants (10.7 months) during a live social learning task. First, infants observed mothers demonstrate positive or negative emotions toward novel toys. Next, infants’ own toy interaction (learning) was measured. Infants’ social learning likelihood was robustly predicted by mother-infant interpersonal neural connectivity in the Alpha (6-9 Hz) band. Stronger dyadic neural connectedness predicted increased learning, and was associated with extended ostensive eye contact and maternal utterances. Intra-infant neural connectivity predicted learning valence (positive/negative) but was unrelated to learning likelihood. Therefore, interpersonal connectivity is a neural mechanism by which infants learn from their social partners.

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Section: Mechanistic Effect Of Interpersonal Dyadic Connectivity On Ssupporting

confidence: 89%

Mother-infant interpersonal neural connectivity predicts infants’ social learning

Leong¹,

Noreika²,

Clackson³

et al. 2019

Preprint

Self Cite

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“…when the teacher's brain activity is shifted backwards relative to the student's brain activity) (21). Similar to (22), we computed time-lagged student-to-student and student-toteacher brain synchrony and then correlated brain synchrony with delayed retention for each time lag (see Methods). On average, the correlation between student-to-student synchrony and delayed retention indeed peaked for zero-lagged synchrony (Fig.…”

Section: Moment-to-moment Variations In Brain Synchrony Predict Delaymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Calculated Time-lagged cross-correlation analysis (Fig. 4): Similar to (22), for each student-student dyad, the time course of one of the students was shifted either backward or forward in the range of -500 msec to +500 msec in steps of 50msec. Similarly, for each student-teacher dyad, the time course of the teacher was shifted between -500 msec to +500 msec in steps of 50 msec with respect to the time course of the student.…”

Section: Quantifying Memory Retentionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Brain-to-brain synchrony between students and teachers predicts learning outcomes

Davidesco

Laurent

Valk

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Highlights• Electroencephalogram (EEG) was concurrently recorded in a simulated classroom from groups of four students and a teacher.• Alpha-band (8-12Hz) brain-to-brain synchrony predicted students' performance in a delayed post-test.• Moment-to-moment variation in alpha-band brain-to-brain synchrony indicated what specific information was retained by students.• Whereas student-to-student brain synchrony best predicted learning at a zero time lag, student-to-teacher brain synchrony best predicted learning when adjusting for a ~200 millisecond lag in the students' brain activity relative to the teacher's brain activity. SummaryLittle is known about the brain mechanisms that underpin how humans learn while interacting with one another in ecologically-valid environments (1-3). This is because cognitive neuroscientists typically measure one participant at a time in a highly constrained environment (e.g., inside a brain scanner). In the past few years, researchers have begun comparing brain responses across individuals (4-6) demonstrating that brain-to-brain synchrony can predict subsequent memory retention (7-9). Yet previous research has been constrained to noninteracting individuals. Surprisingly, the one study that was conducted in a group setting found that brain synchrony between students in a classroom predicted how engaged the students were, but not how much information they retained (10). This is unexpected because brain-to-brain synchrony is hypothesized to be driven, at least partially, by shared attention (11,12), and shared attention has been shown to affect subsequent memory (13). Here we used EEG to 3 simultaneously record brain activity from groups of four students and a teacher in a simulated classroom to investigate whether brain-to-brain synchrony, both between students and between the students and the teacher, can predict learning outcomes (Fig. 1A). We found that brain-tobrain synchrony in the Alpha band (8-12Hz) predicted students' delayed memory retention.Further, moment-to-moment variation in alpha-band brain-to-brain synchrony discriminated between content that was retained or forgotten. Whereas student-to-student brain synchrony best predicted delayed memory retention at a zero time lag, student-to-teacher brain synchrony best predicted memory retention when adjusting for a ~200 millisecond lag in the students' brain activity relative to the teacher's brain activity. These findings provide key new evidence for the importance of brain data collected simultaneously from groups of individuals in ecologicallyvalid settings. Results and DiscussionBehavioral results. Students' content knowledge was assessed a week before the EEG session, immediately following each one of four mini-lectures, and one week later ( Fig. 1B; See Methods). As expected, students' content knowledge significantly increased from the pre-test (0.43±0.02; mean ± standard deviation of the mean) to the immediate post-test (0.73±0.02; F(1,30)=210.76; p<10 -13 ), and from the pre-test to the delayed post-test (0.64±0.02; F(1,30)=...

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“…More recently, a growing body of research uses a ‘leaner’ definition to study attention coordination—sometimes termed ‘coordinated attention’—and defines it as two social partners looking at the same object at the same time, with or without conscious awareness of the other person's attentional state (e.g., de Barbaro, Johnson, Forster, & Deák, ; Deák, Krasno, Jasso, & Triesch, ; Deak, Krasno, Treisch, Lewis, & Sepeta, ; Suarez‐Rivera, Smith, & Yu, ; Yu & Smith, ; Yu, Suanda, & Smith, ). Research taking this perspective defines ‘leading’ or ‘following’ the other person's attention based solely on the temporal relationship of the social partners' gaze or behaviors (Chen, Castellanos, Yu, & Houston, ; Deák et al, ; Deak et al, ; Piazza, Hasenfratz, Hasson, & Lew‐Williams, ; Suarez‐Rivera et al, ; Wass et al, ; Yu & Smith, ; Yu et al, ). The two partners may or may not intentionally lead or follow the other.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What leads to coordinated attention in parent–toddler interactions? Children's hearing status matters

Chen

Castellanos

et al. 2019

Developmental Science

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Coordinated attention between children and their parents plays an important role in their social, language, and cognitive development. The current study used head‐mounted eye‐trackers to investigate the effects of children's prelingual hearing loss on how they achieve coordinated attention with their hearing parents during free‐flowing object play. We found that toddlers with hearing loss (age: 24–37 months) had similar overall gaze patterns (e.g., gaze length and proportion of face looking) as their normal‐hearing peers. In addition, children's hearing status did not affect how likely parents and children attended to the same object at the same time during play. However, when following parents' attention, children with hearing loss used both parents' gaze directions and hand actions as cues, whereas children with normal hearing mainly relied on parents' hand actions. The diversity of pathways leading to coordinated attention suggests the flexibility and robustness of developing systems in using multiple pathways to achieve the same functional end.

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Parental neural responsivity to infants’ visual attention: How mature brains influence immature brains during social interaction

Cited by 112 publications

References 58 publications

Mother-infant interpersonal neural connectivity predicts infants’ social learning

Mother-infant interpersonal neural connectivity predicts infants’ social learning

Brain-to-brain synchrony between students and teachers predicts learning outcomes

What leads to coordinated attention in parent–toddler interactions? Children's hearing status matters

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