Using Alpha Event-Related Desynchronization to Explore Individual and Team Neurodynamics

• In Event: 44.048 - Using Neuroscience Methods to Study Learning: Focus on the Process, Not Just the Outcomes

Abstract

This study explored the efficacy of event-related desynchronization (ERD) of the brain’s alpha waves for the study of individual and team neurodynamics in the context of an authentic collaborative problem-solving task. Alpha ERD has been found to sensitively reflect the dynamics of working memory load and respond to levels of task difficulty in multiple experimental tasks (e.g., Klimesch et al., 2005; Neubauer et al., 2006). Informed by prior work on understanding working memory dynamics using EEG, this study was designed to address the following research question:

What insights regarding individual and team neurodynamics during collaborative problem solving can be obtained using event-related desynchronization of alpha?

Study participants were 80 undergraduates divided into 40 heterogeneous dyads. Twenty participants participated in the EEG portion of the study. Dyads used an online resource to define the problem to be solved and solved this problem using what they deemed to be relevant resources. Half of the dyads used an epistemic script as a scaffold, while the other half employed a social script (Weinberger et al., 2005). Participants in the neurodynamics portion of the study wore a wireless EEG headset and completed EEG calibration tasks and two alpha baseline tasks before working on the problem-solving activity.

Results show that dyads in the epistemic script condition significantly outperformed social scripts dyads on three of the four problem-solving rubric criteria and the total score: Identify Strategies (U = 314.00, z = 3.43, p = .002), Propose Solutions (U = 314.00, z = 3.37, p = .002), Evaluate Potential Solutions (U = 352.00, z = 4.43, p < .001), Total Score (U = 360.00, z = 4.41, p < .001).

At the individual learners’ level, alpha ERD% values revealed that ERD% was higher for participants in the epistemic script condition. This difference was significant for Explore Resources (U = 93.00, z = 3.25, p = .001) and Negotiate Solutions (U = 77.50, z = 2.08, p = .03). Effect sizes were r = .72 (large) and r = .46 (medium) respectively. This suggests that individual participants within epistemic dyads exhibited more intense periods of cognitive activity than their social script counterparts.

At the team level, epistemic dyads demonstrated higher levels of across-brain neurosynchrony (Stevens et al, 2014; Lu et al, 2017 in this symposium). Table 1 shows that seven significant positive correlations in the small-medium effect range were found between epistemic teammates’ ERD% compared to three small positive correlations between teammates’ ERD%.

This study demonstrates that alpha ERD can serve as a useful measure for understanding individual students’ neurodynamics and team neurosynchronies during learning tasks. This measure complements existing frameworks that rely on self-reported data (e.g., Van Gog, Paas, & Van Merriënboer, 2008), secondary task procedures (e.g., Brünken, Plass, & Leutner, 2003), and other psychophysiological measures (e.g., Schneps et al., 2013). Our results also confirm the finding that social scripts can improve individual knowledge acquisition in a collaborative learning task (Weinberger et al., 2005). However, when the focus is on collaborative problem-solving performance, epistemic scripts appear to provide more effective scaffolding than social scripts.

Authors

• Pasha Antonenko, University of Florida

• Robert Davis, University of Florida

• Mehmet Celepkolu, University of Florida

• Jiahui Wang, University of Florida

• Nancy Jean Ruzycki, University of Florida

• Christine Davis, University of Florida