Father-child dyads exhibit unique inter-subject synchronization during co-viewing of animation video stimuli

ABSTRACT

Inter-subject synchronization reflects the entrainment of two individuals to each other’s brain signals. In parent-child dyads, synchronization indicates an attunement to each other’s emotional states. Despite the ubiquity with which parents and their children watch screen media together, no study has investigated synchronization in father-child dyads during co-viewing. The present study examined whether father-child dyads would exhibit inter-subject synchronization that is unique to the dyad and hence would not be observed in control dyads (i.e., randomly paired signals). Hyperscanning fNIRS was used to record the prefrontal cortex (PFC) signals of 29 fathers and their preschool-aged children as they co-viewed children’s shows. Three 1-min videos from “Brave”, “Peppa Pig” and “The Incredibles” were presented to each dyad and children’s ratings of video positivity and familiarity were obtained. Four PFC clusters were analyzed: medial left, medial right, frontal left and frontal right clusters. Results demonstrated that true father-child dyads showed significantly greater synchronization than control dyads in the medial left cluster during the emotionally arousing conflict scene. Dyads with older fathers displayed less synchrony and older fathers, compared to younger ones, exhibited greater activity. These findings suggest unique inter-subject synchronization in father-child dyads during co-viewing which is potentially modulated by parental age.

KEYWORDS:

• Synchrony
• inter-subject synchronization
• parent-child
• father-child
• fNIRS
• prefrontal cortex
• narrative scene
• video stimuli
• co-viewing

Acknowledgments

We would like to extend our appreciation to Justin Randall Durnford, Jan Paolo Macapinlac Balagtas, Siti Syazana Binti Abdul Halim, Anais Ang, Jezebel Chin Syuen Chong, Wan Ting Wong, Michelle Neoh and Lim Meng Yu for their assistance in the project, and Nur Hasyimah Bte Johari for his illustration.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the NAP Start-up Grant M4081597 (G.E.) from Nanyang Technological University Singapore as well as the Ministry of Education Tier-1 Grant RG55/18 (NS) 2018-T1-001-172 (G.E.), and the Singapore Children’s Society (A.A.). The founding agencies had no role in the conceptualization, design, data collection, analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript; Ministry of Education - Singapore [MOE2016-SSRTG-017];