Does Biobehavioral Synchrony Promote Learning? A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

• In Event: Innovations in the Developmental Study of Biobehavioral Synchrony

Abstract

Inspirational teaching, responsive parenting, and collaborative interactions with peers are critical for children’s learning. A common ingredient may underlie all these successful social transactions: biobehavioral synchrony, defined as inter-subject coupling of behavioral and neurobiological activity over time. Despite the significance of this construct, the scientific literature examining the role of synchrony in boosting cognitive performance and learning is highly fragmented and scattered across different subfields, including developmental cognitive neuroscience, social development, and educational psychology. These approaches for capturing or eliciting synchrony are theoretically and methodologically heterogeneous. The diversity of constructs and labels used to understand this phenomenon across different subfields (e.g., “adaptive contingency”, “coupling”, “contagion”, “brain-to-brain dynamics”) is among the biggest barriers to understanding the development of synchrony and its potential benefits. Because existing empirical findings often lack a unifying theoretical framework, they remain at a purely descriptive level to document correlations between inter-subject synchrony in one type of activity (e.g., neural) and one aspect of cognition (e.g., attention), ignoring social transactions and falling short of advancing a mechanistic understanding. The current project aims to remove some of these barriers to our understanding by conducting a systematic review of currently disconnected literatures on various forms of biobehavioral synchrony and integrating them through a meta-analysis.
Methods and Results: We identified 9,313 peer-reviewed articles on biobehavioral synchrony and children’s learning within three databases (PubMed, PsycINFO, ERIC), using a comprehensive list of key words including and related to “synchrony” (e.g., “coupling”, “contingency”, “brain-to-brain”) and words related to cognition (e.g., “cognition”, “attention”, “executive functioning”). Through a multi-site international collaborative effort, we have successfully screened 62% of abstracts for inclusion as of September 16, 2020. We expect to complete screening of articles by the end of October, 2020. Consequently, effect sizes will be extracted and the meta-analysis will be finalized according to our pre-registered hypotheses before the SRCD meeting in April. Thus far, we have identified 715 studies that meet initial eligibility criteria, suggesting feasibility of this meta-analysis. The meta-analysis will examine the magnitude of the association between a measure of inter-subject synchrony during live interaction (e.g., parent-child, teacher-child, child-child), and a child cognitive outcome collected in relation to the interaction. Children’s age, sex, SES, and the setting of the interaction will be modeled as moderators of interest.
Discussion: This presentation will provide a thorough overview of the theoretical background on biobehavioral synchrony and will review common statistical methodologies employed to study biobehavioral synchrony in children. Our meta-analytic approach and findings will be reviewed and outcomes thereof discussed, leading to the suggestion of a novel framework for biobehavioral synchrony across disciplines and methodologies. Gaps in knowledge and future directions for research on the role of synchrony in cognitive development will also be proposed.

Authors

• Anna Parenteau, University of California - Davis
  Presenting Author

• Camelia E Hostinar, University of California - Davis
  Non-Presenting Author

• Stefania V. Vacaru, Radboud University Medical Center
  Non-Presenting Author

• Hellen Lustermans, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center
  Non-Presenting Author

• Plamina Dimanova, University of Zurich
  Non-Presenting Author

• Carolina de Weerth, Radboud University Medical Center
  Non-Presenting Author

• Nora Maria Raschle, Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development at the University of Zurich
  Non-Presenting Author