Neural hyperscanning in caregiver-child dyads: A paradigm for studying the long-term effects of facilitated vs. disrupted attention on working memory and executive functioning in young children

Abstract

Parent-child interactions shape children's cognitive outcomes such that caregivers can guide attention and facilitate learning opportunities. These interactions provide infants and toddlers with rich, naturalistic experiences that engage complex cognitive functions and lay the groundwork for the development of mature executive functions. Although most caregivers seek to engage children optimally, they can unintentionally impede this developmental process by being under-engaged or intrusive. When caregivers are under engaged, children do not have the proper scaffolding to know what to attend to in a complex environment. When parents are intrusive, they inadvertently disrupt the child's attention and direct learning to information that the parent deems important, but the child may find uninteresting or irrelevant. This disruption can impede the learning process even if the child's behavior does not appear to be negatively affected during the unfolding parent-child interaction. Understanding the moment-to-moment neural basis of these processes is critical to uncover the role that caregivers play in the development of attention and learning, which in turn impacts the development of working memory and executive function. Simultaneous brain recording, called hyperscanning, is a burgeoning method that measures brain synchrony across parent-child dyads when engaged in a shared task. In this opinion piece, we first review existing literature that highlights the important role caregivers play in guiding attention and learning in infants and toddlers and how these interactions contribute to the development of working memory and executive function in young children. Next, we review the existing literature using hyperscanning and dual eye tracking paradigms to uncover the patterning of interactions when caregivers guide attention in a manner that either matches the expectations of the child or over- or under-directs the child's attention. We provide best-practices for employing hyperscanning techniques to uncover how caregivers optimally engage infant and toddlers' attention in the moment, and how children's developing memory of these patterns of interaction build their executive function abilities, both with their caregivers and with other adults and children.