TY - JOUR
T1 - Prior physical synchrony enhances rapport and inter-brain synchronization during subsequent educational communication
AU - Nozawa, Takayuki
AU - Sakaki, Kohei
AU - Ikeda, Shigeyuki
AU - Jeong, Hyeonjeong
AU - Yamazaki, Shohei
AU - Kawata, Kelssy Hitomi dos Santos
AU - Kawata, Natasha Yuriko dos Santos
AU - Sasaki, Yukako
AU - Kulason, Kay
AU - Hirano, Kanan
AU - Miyake, Yoshihiro
AU - Kawashima, Ryuta
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Ms. Y. Yamada for helping with our experiment, the participants in this study, and all colleagues in our laboratory for their support. This work was partially supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers JP26330171, JP15H01771, and JP17H01753, and also by the Center of Innovation Program from the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), Japan.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, The Author(s).
PY - 2019/12/1
Y1 - 2019/12/1
N2 - Physical synchrony has been suggested to have positive effects on not only concurrent but also subsequent communication, but the underlying neural processes are unclear. Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning, we tested the effects of preceding physical synchrony on subsequent dyadic teaching-learning communication. Thirty-two pairs of participants performed two experimental sessions. In each session, they underwent a rhythmic arm movement block with synchronous or asynchronous conditions, and then taught/learned unknown words to/from each other according to a given scenario. Neural activities in their medial and left lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) were measured and inter-brain synchronization (IBS) during the teaching-learning blocks was evaluated. Participants rated their subjective rapport during the teaching-learning blocks, and took a word memory test. The analyses revealed that (1) prior physical synchrony enhanced teacher-learner rapport; (2) prior physical synchrony also enhanced IBS in the lateral PFC; and (3) IBS changes correlated positively with rapport changes. Physical synchrony did however not affect word memory performance. These results suggest that IBS can be useful to measure the effects of social-bonding facilitation activities for educational communication.
AB - Physical synchrony has been suggested to have positive effects on not only concurrent but also subsequent communication, but the underlying neural processes are unclear. Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning, we tested the effects of preceding physical synchrony on subsequent dyadic teaching-learning communication. Thirty-two pairs of participants performed two experimental sessions. In each session, they underwent a rhythmic arm movement block with synchronous or asynchronous conditions, and then taught/learned unknown words to/from each other according to a given scenario. Neural activities in their medial and left lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) were measured and inter-brain synchronization (IBS) during the teaching-learning blocks was evaluated. Participants rated their subjective rapport during the teaching-learning blocks, and took a word memory test. The analyses revealed that (1) prior physical synchrony enhanced teacher-learner rapport; (2) prior physical synchrony also enhanced IBS in the lateral PFC; and (3) IBS changes correlated positively with rapport changes. Physical synchrony did however not affect word memory performance. These results suggest that IBS can be useful to measure the effects of social-bonding facilitation activities for educational communication.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41598-019-49257-z
DO - 10.1038/s41598-019-49257-z
M3 - Article
C2 - 31484977
AN - SCOPUS:85071776106
VL - 9
JO - Scientific Reports
JF - Scientific Reports
SN - 2045-2322
IS - 1
M1 - 12747
ER -