Mother-infant social gaze dynamics relate to infant brain activity and word segmentation

Monica Vanoncini; Stefanie Hoehl; Birgit Elsner; Sebastian Wallot; Natalie Boll-Avetisyan; Ezgi Kayhan

doi:10.1016/j.dcn.2023.101331

Mother-infant social gaze dynamics relate to infant brain activity and word segmentation

Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research

Authors

Monica Vanoncini
Stefanie Hoehl
Birgit Elsner
Sebastian Wallot
Natalie Boll-Avetisyan
Ezgi Kayhan

The ‘social brain’, consisting of areas sensitive to social information, supposedly gates the mechanisms involved in human language learning. Early preverbal interactions are guided by ostensive signals, such as gaze patterns, which are coordinated across body, brain, and environment. However, little is known about how the infant brain processes social gaze in naturalistic interactions and how this relates to infant language development. During free-play of 9-month-olds with their mothers, we recorded hemodynamic cortical activity of ´social brain` areas (prefrontal cortex, temporo-parietal junctions) via fNIRS, and micro-coded mother’s and infant’s social gaze. Infants’ speech processing was assessed with a word segmentation task. Using joint recurrence quantification analysis, we examined the connection between infants’ ´social brain` activity and the temporal dynamics of social gaze at intrapersonal (i.e., infant’s coordination, maternal coordination) and interpersonal (i.e., dyadic coupling) levels. Regression modeling revealed that intrapersonal dynamics in maternal social gaze (but not infant’s coordination or dyadic coupling) coordinated significantly with infant’s cortical activity. Moreover, recurrence quantification analysis revealed that intrapersonal maternal social gaze dynamics (in terms of entropy) were the best predictor of infants’ word segmentation. The findings support the importance of social interaction in language development, particularly highlighting maternal social gaze dynamics.

Original language	English
Article number	101331
Journal	Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
Volume	65
Number of pages	8
ISSN	1878-9293
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2023.101331
Publication status	Published - 01.02.2024

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This research was funded by a grant awarded by the University of Potsdam , Germany, to NB-A, EK, and BE, and a DFG grant (nr 402789467 ) awarded to EK. We thank all the mothers and infants who took part in the study, and the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of the Vienna General Hospital for supporting our participant recruitment. The authors are grateful to Jessica Gärtner for adapting fNIRS and RQA scripts. We thank Markus Tünte, Liesbeth Forsthuber, as well as all research assistants, interns, and master students for their help in data collection and preparation of the experiment: Sandra Gaisbacher, Laura Neumann, Julia Otter, Lisa Triebenbacher, Jakob Weickmann, Felicia Wittmann, Gesine Jordan, Nina Maier, Rebecca Lutz, Celine Dorczok, Asena Boyadzhieva, Johannes Bullinger, Moritz Wunderwald.

Funding Information:
This research was funded by a grant awarded by the University of Potsdam, Germany, to NB-A, EK, and BE, and a DFG grant (nr 402789467) awarded to EK. We thank all the mothers and infants who took part in the study, and the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of the Vienna General Hospital for supporting our participant recruitment. The authors are grateful to Jessica Gärtner for adapting fNIRS and RQA scripts. We thank Markus Tünte, Liesbeth Forsthuber, as well as all research assistants, interns, and master students for their help in data collection and preparation of the experiment: Sandra Gaisbacher, Laura Neumann, Julia Otter, Lisa Triebenbacher, Jakob Weickmann, Felicia Wittmann, Gesine Jordan, Nina Maier, Rebecca Lutz, Celine Dorczok, Asena Boyadzhieva, Johannes Bullinger, Moritz Wunderwald.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors

Research areas

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy, Infant word segmentation, Social gaze, Mother-infant interactions, Entropy, Recurrence quantification analysis
Psychology