Mother-child inter-brain synchrony during a mutual visual search task: A study of feedback valence and role

Parent and child have been shown to synchronize their behaviors and physiology during social interactions. This synchrony is an important marker of their relationship quality and subsequently the child’s social and emotional development. Therefore, understanding the factors that influence parent–child synchrony is an important undertaking. Using EEG hyperscanning, this study investigated brain-to-brain synchrony in mother-child dyads when they took turns performing a visual search task and received positive or negative feedback. In addition to the effect of feedback valence, we studied how their assigned role, i.e., observing or performing the task, influenced synchrony. Results revealed that mother-child synchrony was higher during positive feedback relative to negative feedback in delta and gamma frequency bands. Furthermore, a main effect was found for role in the alpha band with higher synchrony when a child observed their mother performing the task compared to when the mother observed their child. These findings reveal that a positive social context could lead a mother and child to synchronize more on a neural level, which could subsequently improve the quality of their relationship. This study provides insight into mechanisms that underlie mother-child brain-to-brain synchrony, and establishes a framework by which the impact of emotion and task demand on a dyad’s synchrony can be investigated.