2-023 - Using Interactive Neuroscience to Understand the Developing Social Brain

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Children develop in a dynamic sea of social interaction, but much developmental neuroscience has examined brain development in non-interactive or ‘offline’ contexts (e.g., viewing photographs of faces). Recent research, primarily from adults, has suggested that socially-interactive experimental contexts may provide unique, more ecologically valid information about the neural mechanisms of social cognition, but little is known about whether and how such processes operate in children. This symposium presents converging developmental evidence—spanning social contexts and methodologies—to illustrate how social interaction shapes the social brain during childhood.

Laying this symposium’s foundation, the first paper theoretically and empirically establishes the import of socially-interactive developmental neuroscience and presents developmental fMRI data from interactive eye-tracking paradigms. The subsequent three papers also present empirical data investigating key facets of social interaction. The second paper examines social motivation in middle childhood via an fMRI paradigm in which children believe they are chatting with a peer. Results show that reward and social-cognitive systems support real-time social motivation, with recruitment of these systems changing with age. The third paper examines shared intentionality in early childhood using fNIRS data simultaneously recorded from parent-child pairs, finding increased interpersonal neural synchronization during positive interactions. Finally, the fourth paper examines how socially-interactive paradigms can improve understanding of social disabilities. During a simulated social interaction, concurrent eye-tracking and EEG data reveal atypical social attention in children with autism.

Overall, this symposium illustrates how interactive neuroscience methods are crucial for understanding both typical and atypical development and offers promising directions for future research.

Sub Unit

• Biology and Neuroscience

Chairs

• Katherine Rice Warnell, Texas State University

• Elizabeth Redcay, University of Maryland

Individual Presentations

• Toward a Truly Social Neuroscience: Using Interactive Eyetracking to Study the Neural Bases of Social Interaction in Development - Presenting Author: Leonhard Schilbach, Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry

• Developmental Changes in the Neural Bases of Real-time Peer Interaction - Presenting Author: Katherine Rice Warnell, Texas State University; Eleonora Sadikova, University of Maryland; Elizabeth Redcay, University of Maryland

• Interpersonal Neural Synchronization as a Biological Mechanism for Shared Intentionality in Adults and Children - Presenting Author: Susan B. Perlman, University of Pittsburgh; Caroline MacGillivray, University of Pittsburgh; Meghan E Murphy, University of Pittsburgh; Theodore J. Huppert, University of Pittsburgh

• Attention and Brain Response to Eye Contact During an Interactive Social Neuroscience Experiment - Presenting Author: Max Rolison, Yale Child Study Center; Adam Naples, Yale Child Study Center; Jennifer Foss-Feig, Yale Child Study Center; Julie Trapani, Yale Child Study Center; Ariel Chang, Yale Child Study Center; Kathryn McNaughton, Yale Child Study Center; Talena Day, Yale Child Study Center; Takumi McAllister, Yale Child Study Center; James McPartland, Yale Child Study Center