Cooperation in primary school children: The role of cardiac vagal tone and cognitive control

Abstract

Cooperation is crucial in classrooms for positive interactions among pupils, but the factors influencing children’s cooperative behaviors remain debated. This study explores the impact of cardiac vagal tone (CVT), a measure of physiological self-regulation, and cognitive control on cooperation among 109 primary school students. Heart rate variability was used to assess self-regulation, and cognitive control was evaluated through an AX-Continuous Performance Task. Cooperative behavior was measured with a child-friendly Stag Hunt game. Results showed that moderate CVT is related to increased cooperative actions, but no direct relationship between cognitive control types and cooperation was found. However, an interaction effect indicated that moderate CVT particularly boosts cooperation in children who employ proactive cognitive control. These findings emphasize the need to develop physiological self-regulation skills to enhance cooperative behavior in educational settings, supporting better social, and emotional well-being, and learning outcomes.

Keywords:

• Cooperation
• cognitive control
• cardiac vagal tone
• school-age children
• physiological self-regulation

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Notes

1 The Bernoulli Distribution is a special case of Binomial Distribution where only a single trial is performed with only two possible outcomes. In the Bernoulli distribution, each of the two outcomes has a fixed probability of occurring that takes value 1 (“presence,” in our study “cooperative trial”) with probability p and the value 0 (“absence,” in our study “non-cooperative trial”) with probability q = 1 − p. For each subject, we had 10 Bernoulli trials. We summarized these 10 observations by recording how many “successes” (values of 1) and how many “failures” (values of 0) were observed for each subject. To include the probability of cooperating in the 10 Bernoulli trials as our dependent variable, we defined our dependent variable as the ratio of the sum of cooperative outcomes (the total number of “successes”) to the total number of non-cooperative outcomes (because we had 10 trials, it is equal to 10 − the sum of cooperative outcomes).

Additional information

Funding

This research work was supported by one doctoral fellowship funded by CARIPARO (matriculate number 2037900) and one (matriculate number 2081653) by the University of Padua and Edizioni Centro Studi Erickson (Trento, Italy).

Notes on contributors

Benedetta Zagni

Benedetta Zagni is a psychologist and a PhD Student in Psychological Sciences at Developmental Psychology at the University of Padova, collaborating with Edizioni Centro Studi Erickson. She focuses on students’ social and emotional well-being, particularly through cooperative learning.

Libera Ylenia Mastromatteo

Libera Ylenia Mastromatteo is a PhD Student in Psychological Sciences at Developmental Psychology at the University of Padova. Her main research interests are related to the physiological underpinnings of cooperative behaviors.

Sara Scrimin

Sara Scrimin is an Associate Professor of Developmental Psychology at the University of Padova, Italy where in 2007 she obtained her PhD in Developmental Psychology. Her research adopts a bio-psycho-social approach and focuses on the effects of stress on child development with specific attention to individual differences in child physiological self-regulation. Her most recent work has focused on school-related stress and student adjustment.