Dual-MEG interbrain synchronization during turn-taking verbal interactions between mothers and children.

Verbal interaction and imitation are essential for language learning and development in young children. However, it is unclear how mother-child dyads synchronize oscillatory neural activity at the cortical level in turn-based speech interactions. Our study investigated interbrain synchrony in mother-child pairs during a turn-taking paradigm of verbal imitation. A dual-MEG (magnetoencephalography) setup was used to measure brain activity from interactive mother-child pairs simultaneously. Interpersonal neural synchronization was compared between socially interactive and noninteractive tasks (passive listening to pure tones). Interbrain networks showed increased synchronization during the socially interactive compared to noninteractive conditions in the theta and alpha bands. Enhanced interpersonal brain synchrony was observed in the right angular gyrus, right triangular, and left opercular parts of the inferior frontal gyrus. Moreover, these parietal and frontal regions appear to be the cortical hubs exhibiting a high number of interbrain connections. These cortical areas could serve as a neural marker for the interactive component in verbal social communication. The present study is the first to investigate mother-child interbrain neural synchronization during verbal social interactions using a dual-MEG setup. Our results advance our understanding of turn-taking during verbal interaction between mother-child dyads and suggest a role for social "gating" in language learning.

Gender stereotypes about interests start early and cause gender disparities in computer science and engineering.

Societal stereotypes depict girls as less interested than boys in computer science and engineering. We demonstrate the existence of these stereotypes among children and adolescents from first to 12th grade and their potential negative consequences for girls' subsequent participation in these fields. Studies 1 and 2 (n = 2,277; one preregistered) reveal that children as young as age six (first grade) and adolescents across multiple racial/ethnic and gender intersections (Black, Latinx, Asian, and White girls and boys) endorse stereotypes that girls are less interested than boys in computer science and engineering. The more that individual girls endorse gender-interest stereotypes favoring boys in computer science and engineering, the lower their own interest and sense of belonging in these fields. These gender-interest stereotypes are endorsed even more strongly than gender stereotypes about computer science and engineering abilities. Studies 3 and 4 (n = 172; both preregistered) experimentally demonstrate that 8- to 9-y-old girls are significantly less interested in an activity marked with a gender stereotype ("girls are less interested in this activity than boys") compared to an activity with no such stereotype ("girls and boys are equally interested in this activity"). Taken together, both ecologically valid real-world studies (Studies 1 and 2) and controlled preregistered laboratory experiments (Studies 3 and 4) reveal that stereotypes that girls are less interested than boys in computer science and engineering emerge early and may contribute to gender disparities.

Am I a good person? Academic correlates of explicit and implicit self-esteem during early childhood.

Implicit and explicit self-esteem are not commonly measured in the same children. Using a cross-sectional design, data from 354 Croatian children (184 girls) in Grade 1 (Mage = 7.55 years) and Grade 5 (Mage = 11.58 years) were collected in Spring 2019. All children completed explicit and implicit self-esteem measures; math and language grades were obtained. For the explicit measure, older children showed lower self-esteem than younger children, and girls showed lower self-esteem than boys. For the implicit measure, there were no age effects, and girls showed higher self-esteem than boys. Although both types of self-esteem were positively associated with academic achievement, implicit self-esteem was associated more strongly with language than with math achievement. Discussion is provided about why self-esteem relates to academic achievement during childhood.

Infant brain imaging using magnetoencephalography: Challenges, solutions, and best practices.

The excellent temporal resolution and advanced spatial resolution of magnetoencephalography (MEG) makes it an excellent tool to study the neural dynamics underlying cognitive processes in the developing brain. Nonetheless, a number of challenges exist when using MEG to image infant populations. There is a persistent belief that collecting MEG data with infants presents a number of limitations and challenges that are difficult to overcome. Due to this notion, many researchers either avoid conducting infant MEG research or believe that, in order to collect high-quality data, they must impose limiting restrictions on the infant or the experimental paradigm. In this article, we discuss the various challenges unique to imaging awake infants and young children with MEG, and share general best-practice guidelines and recommendations for data collection, acquisition, preprocessing, and analysis. The current article is focused on methodology that allows investigators to test the sensory, perceptual, and cognitive capacities of awake and moving infants. We believe that such methodology opens the pathway for using MEG to provide mechanistic explanations for the complex behavior observed in awake, sentient, and dynamically interacting infants, thus addressing core topics in developmental cognitive neuroscience.

Lower implicit self-esteem as a pathway linking childhood abuse to depression and suicidal ideation.

Identifying the potential pathways linking childhood abuse to depression and suicidal ideation is critical for developing effective interventions. This study investigated implicit self-esteem-unconscious valenced self-evaluation-as a potential pathway linking childhood abuse with depression and suicidal ideation. A sample of youth aged 8-16 years (N = 240) completed a self-esteem Implicit Association Test (IAT) and assessments of abuse exposure, and psychopathology symptoms, including depression, suicidal ideation, anxiety, and externalizing symptoms. Psychopathology symptoms were re-assessed 1-3 years later. Childhood abuse was positively associated with baseline and follow-up depression symptoms and suicidal ideation severity, and negatively associated with implicit self-esteem. Lower implicit self-esteem was associated with both depression and suicidal ideation assessed concurrently and predicted significant increases in depression and suicidal ideation over the longitudinal follow-up period. Lower implicit self-esteem was also associated with baseline anxiety, externalizing symptoms, and a general psychopathology factor (i.e. p-factor). We found an indirect effect of childhood abuse on baseline and follow-up depression symptoms and baseline suicidal ideation through implicit self-esteem. These findings point to implicit self-esteem as a potential mechanism linking childhood abuse to depression and suicidal ideation.

Social experiences and youth psychopathology during the COVID-19 pandemic: A longitudinal study.

The early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated stay-at-home orders resulted in a stark reduction in daily social interactions for children and adolescents. Given that peer relationships are especially important during this developmental stage, it is crucial to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on social behavior and risk for psychopathology in children and adolescents. In a longitudinal sample (N=224) of children (7-10y) and adolescents (13-15y) assessed at three strategic time points (before the pandemic, during the initial stay-at-home order period, and six months later after the initial stay-at-home order period was lifted), we examine whether certain social factors protect against increases in stress-related psychopathology during the pandemic, controlling for pre-pandemic symptoms. Youth who reported less in-person and digital socialization, greater social isolation, and less social support had worsened psychopathology during the pandemic. Greater social isolation and decreased digital socialization during the pandemic were associated with greater risk for psychopathology after experiencing pandemic-related stressors. In addition, children, but not adolescents, who maintained some in-person socialization were less likely to develop internalizing symptoms following exposure to pandemic-related stressors. We identify social factors that promote well-being and resilience in youth during this societal event.

Exploring developmental changes in infant anticipation and perceptual processing: EEG responses to tactile stimulation.

There is an increasing interest in alpha-range rhythms in the electroencephalogram (EEG) in relation to perceptual and attentional processes. The infant mu rhythm has been extensively studied in the context of linkages between action observation and action production in infancy, but less is known about the mu rhythm in relation to cross-modal processes involving somatosensation. We investigated differences in mu responses to cued vibrotactile stimulation of the hand in two age groups of infants: From 6 to 7 months and 13 to 14 months. We were also interested in anticipatory neural responses in the alpha frequency range prior to tactile stimulation. Tactile stimulation of infants' left or right hand was preceded by an audiovisual cue signaling which hand would be stimulated. In response to the tactile stimulus, infants demonstrated significant mu desynchronization over the central areas contralateral to the hand stimulated, with higher mu peak frequency and greater contralateral mu desynchronization for older infants. Prior to the tactile stimulus, both age groups showed significant bilateral alpha desynchronization over frontocentral sites, which may be indicative of generalized anticipation of an upcoming stimulus. The findings highlight the potential of examining the sensorimotor mu rhythm in the context of infant attentional development.

Development of Math Attitudes and Math Self-Concepts: Gender Differences, Implicit-Explicit Dissociations, and Relations to Math Achievement.

Three hundred and ninety-one children (195 girls; Mage  = 9.56 years) attending Grades 1 and 5 completed implicit and explicit measures of math attitudes and math self-concepts. Math grades were obtained. Multilevel analyses showed that first-grade girls held a strong negative implicit attitude about math, despite no gender differences in math grades or self-reported (explicit) positivity about math. The explicit measures significantly predicted math grades, and implicit attitudes accounted for additional variance in boys. The contrast between the implicit (negativity for girls) and explicit (positivity for girls and boys) effects suggest implicit-explicit dissociations in children, which have also been observed in adults. Early-emerging implicit attitudes may be a foundation for the later development of explicit attitudes and beliefs about math.

Linguistic and developmental influences on superordinate facial configuration categorization in infancy.

Humans perceive emotions in terms of categories, such as "happiness," "sadness," and "anger." To learn these complex conceptual emotion categories, humans must first be able to perceive regularities in expressive behaviors (e.g., facial configurations) across individuals. Recent research suggests that infants spontaneously form "basic-level" categories of facial configurations (e.g., happy vs. fear), but not "superordinate" categories of facial configurations (e.g., positive vs. negative). The current studies further explore how infant age and language impact superordinate categorization of facial configurations associated with different negative emotions. Across all experiments, infants were habituated to one person displaying facial configurations associated with anger and disgust. While 10-month-olds formed a category of person identity (Experiment 1), 14-month-olds formed a category that included negative facial configurations displayed by the same person (Experiment 2). However, neither age formed the hypothesized superordinate category of negative valence. When a verbal label ("toma") was added to each of the habituation events (Experiment 3), 10-month-olds formed a category similar to 14-month-olds in Experiment 2. These findings intersect a larger conversation about the nature and development of children's emotion categories and highlight the importance of considering developmental processes, such as language learning and attentional/memory development, in the design and interpretation of infant categorization studies.

Mechanisms linking socioeconomic status and academic achievement in early childhood: Cognitive stimulation and language.

There is a strong positive association between childhood socioeconomic status (SES) and academic achievement. This disparity may, in part, be explained by differences in early environmental experiences and language development. Cognitive stimulation-including language exposure, access to learning materials, caregiver involvement in children's learning, and variety of experiences-varies by SES and may link SES to language development. Childhood language development in turn is associated with academic achievement. In the current longitudinal study of 101 children (60-75 months), SES was positively associated with cognitive stimulation and performance on language measures. Cognitive stimulation mediated the association between SES and children's language. Furthermore, children's language mediated the association between SES and academic achievement 18 months later. In addition to addressing broader inequalities in access to resources that facilitate caregivers' abilities to provide cognitive stimulation, cognitive stimulation itself could be targeted in future interventions to mitigate SES-related disparities in language and academic achievement.

Enhanced gaze-following behavior in Deaf infants of Deaf parents.

Gaze following plays a role in parent-infant communication and is a key mechanism by which infants acquire information about the world from social input. Gaze following in Deaf infants has been understudied. Twelve Deaf infants of Deaf parents (DoD) who had native exposure to American Sign Language (ASL) were gender-matched and age-matched (±7 days) to 60 spoken-language hearing control infants. Results showed that the DoD infants had significantly higher gaze-following scores than the hearing infants. We hypothesize that in the absence of auditory input, and with support from ASL-fluent Deaf parents, infants become attuned to visual-communicative signals from other people, which engenders increased gaze following. These findings underscore the need to revise the 'deficit model' of deafness. Deaf infants immersed in natural sign language from birth are better at understanding the signals and identifying the referential meaning of adults' gaze behavior compared to hearing infants not exposed to sign language. Broader implications for theories of social-cognitive development are discussed. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/QXCDK_CUmAI.

Body maps in the infant brain: implications for neurodevelopmental disabilities.

This review and synthesis discusses recent work that has utilized brain imaging methods, such as the electroencephalogram (EEG) and magnetoencephalogram, to provide insights into the ways that the body is represented in the infant brain. One aspect of body representation concerns somatotopic maps of the body surface in somatosensory cortex. A good deal is known about the properties of these maps in adults, but there has been relatively little developmental work. Recent studies have provided new insights into the organization of infant neural body maps and have laid the foundations for examining their plasticity in relation to behavioral development. Other work has suggested that neural body maps may be involved in the registration of correspondences between self and other, with implications for early social development. Here, body representations are discussed in the context of preterm birth and autism spectrum disorder, providing novel perspectives relevant to developmental medicine and child neurology. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS: ●Somatotopic body maps develop prenatally through intrinsic and activity-dependent mechanisms. ●There is increasing interest in understanding postnatal plasticity in body maps. ●Body representations may be involved in the registration of preverbal, interpersonal relationships.

Cognitive Stimulation as a Mechanism Linking Socioeconomic Status With Executive Function: A Longitudinal Investigation.

Executive functions (EF), including working memory, inhibition, and cognitive flexibility, vary as a function of socioeconomic status (SES), with children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds having poorer performance than their higher SES peers. Using observational methods, we investigated cognitive stimulation in the home as a mechanism linking SES with EF. In a sample of 101 children aged 60-75 months, cognitive stimulation fully mediated SES-related differences in EF. Critically, cognitive stimulation was positively associated with the development of inhibition and cognitive flexibility across an 18-month follow-up period. Furthermore, EF at T1 explained SES-related differences in academic achievement at T2. Early cognitive stimulation-a modifiable factor-may be a desirable target for interventions designed to ameliorate SES-related differences in cognitive development and academic achievement.

Early implicit-explicit discrepancies in self-esteem as correlates of childhood depressive symptoms.

This longitudinal study examined early social-cognitive markers that might be associated with the emergence of childhood depression and anxiety. At 5 years of age, 137 children completed an implicit self-esteem measure. At 9 years of age, the same children completed measures of implicit self-esteem, explicit self-esteem, depression, and anxiety. Two novel findings emerged. First, higher implicit self-esteem at age 5 than explicit self-esteem at age 9 (implicit > explicit discrepancy) was associated with depressive symptoms at age 9, but not with symptoms of anxiety. Second, this cross-age implicit > explicit discrepancy was associated with depressive symptoms more strongly than was the same implicit > explicit discrepancy measured concurrently at age 9. The overall pattern suggests that the appearance of depressive symptoms in children is associated with discrepancies between implicit and explicit self-esteem and not just lower levels of implicit self-esteem or lower levels of explicit self-esteem taken alone. It is the direction and discrepancy across time that is particularly informative, such that discrepancies between early implicit representations and later explicit reports of self-worth reflect a developmental pathway associated with elevated risk for depressive symptoms. Taken altogether, this study illustrates the benefits of combining work in developmental, child-clinical, and social psychology to provide a more complete view of the developing child. We believe that combining implicit and explicit measures of self-esteem across developmental time points can be used to examine early markers of depression in children at younger ages than typically possible with explicit measures alone.

Neural representations of the body in 60-day-old human infants.

The organization of body representations in the adult brain has been well documented. Little is understood about this aspect of brain organization in human infancy. The current study employed electroencephalography (EEG) with 60-day-old infants to test the distribution of brain responses to tactile stimulation of three different body parts: hand, foot, and lip. Analyses focused on a prominent positive response occurring at 150-200 ms in the somatosensory evoked potential at central and parietal electrode sites. The results show differential electrophysiological signatures for touch of these three body parts. Stimulation of the left hand was associated with greater positive amplitude over the lateral central region contralateral to the side stimulated. Left foot stimulation was associated with greater positivity over the midline parietal site. Stimulation of the midline of the upper lip was associated with a strong bilateral response over the central region. These findings provide new insights into the neural representation of the body in infancy and shed light on research and theories about the involvement of somatosensory cortex in infant imitation and social perception.

Neuropsychology of Human Body Parts: Exploring Categorical Boundaries of Tactile Perception Using Somatosensory Mismatch Responses.

The focus of the current study is on a particular aspect of tactile perception: categorical segmentation on the body surface into discrete body parts. The MMN has been shown to be sensitive to categorical boundaries and language experience in the auditory modality. Here we recorded the somatosensory MMN (sMMN) using two tactile oddball protocols and compared sMMN amplitudes elicited by within- and across-boundary oddball pairs. Both protocols employed the identity MMN method that controls for responsivity at each body location. In the first protocol, we investigated the categorical segmentation of tactile space at the wrist by presenting pairs of tactile oddball stimuli across equal spatial distances, either across the wrist or within the forearm. Amplitude of the sMMN elicited by stimuli presented across the wrist boundary was significantly greater than for stimuli presented within the forearm, suggesting a categorical effect at an early stage of somatosensory processing. The second protocol was designed to investigate the generality of this MMN effect, and involved three digits on one hand. Amplitude of the sMMN elicited by a contrast of the third digit and the thumb was significantly larger than a contrast between the third and fifth digits, suggesting a functional boundary effect that may derive from the way that objects are typically grasped. These findings demonstrate that the sMMN is a useful index of processing of somatosensory spatial discrimination that can be used to study body part categories.

The Role of Visual Association Cortex in Associative Memory Formation across Development.

Associative learning underlies the formation of new episodic memories. Associative memory improves across development, and this age-related improvement is supported by the development of the hippocampus and pFC. Recent work, however, additionally suggests a role for visual association cortex in the formation of associative memories. This study investigated the role of category-preferential visual processing regions in associative memory across development using a paired associate learning task in a sample of 56 youths (age 6-19 years). Participants were asked to bind an emotional face with an object while undergoing fMRI scanning. Outside the scanner, participants completed a memory test. We first investigated age-related changes in neural recruitment and found linear age-related increases in activation in lateral occipital cortex and fusiform gyrus, which are involved in visual processing of objects and faces, respectively. Furthermore, greater activation in these visual processing regions was associated with better subsequent memory for pairs over and above the effect of age and of hippocampal and pFC activation on performance. Recruitment of these visual processing regions mediated the association between age and memory performance, over and above the effects of hippocampal activation. Taken together, these findings extend the existing literature to suggest that greater recruitment of category-preferential visual processing regions during encoding of associative memories is a neural mechanism explaining improved memory across development.

Socioeconomic disparities in academic achievement: A multi-modal investigation of neural mechanisms in children and adolescents.

Growing evidence suggests that childhood socioeconomic status (SES) influences neural development, which may contribute to the well-documented SES-related disparities in academic achievement. However, the particular aspects of SES that impact neural structure and function are not well understood. Here, we investigate associations of childhood SES and a potential mechanism-degree of cognitive stimulation in the home environment-with cortical structure, white matter microstructure, and neural function during a working memory (WM) task across development. Analyses included 53 youths (age 6-19 years). Higher SES as reflected in the income-to-needs ratio was associated with higher parent-reported achievement, WM performance, and cognitive stimulation in the home environment. Although SES was not significantly associated with cortical thickness, children raised in more cognitively stimulating environments had thicker cortex in the frontoparietal network and cognitive stimulation mediated the assocation between SES and cortical thickness in the frontoparietal network. Higher family SES was associated with white matter microstructure and neural activation in the frontoparietal network during a WM task, including greater fractional anisotropy (FA) in the right and left superior longitudinal fasciculi (SLF), and greater BOLD activation in multiple regions of the prefrontal cortex during WM encoding and maintenance. Greater FA and activation in these regions was associated higher parent-reported achievement. Together, cognitive stimulation, WM performance, FA in the SLF, and prefrontal activation during WM encoding and maintenance significantly mediated the association between SES and parent-reported achievement. These findings highlight potential neural, cognitive, and environmental mechanisms linking SES with academic achievement and suggest that enhancing cognitive stimulation in the home environment might be one effective strategy for reducing SES-related disparities in academic outcomes.

Touching lips and hearing fingers: effector-specific congruency between tactile and auditory stimulation modulates N1 amplitude and alpha desynchronization.

Understanding the interactions between audition and sensorimotor processes is of theoretical importance, particularly in relation to speech processing. Although one current focus in this area is on interactions between auditory perception and the motor system, there has been less research on connections between the auditory and somatosensory modalities. The current study takes a novel approach to this omission by examining specific auditory-tactile interactions in the context of speech and non-speech sound production. Electroencephalography was used to examine brain responses when participants were presented with speech syllables (a bilabial sound /pa/ and a non-labial sound /ka/) or finger-snapping sounds that were simultaneously paired with tactile stimulation of either the lower lip or the right middle finger. Analyses focused on the sensory-evoked N1 in the event-related potential and the extent of alpha band desynchronization elicited by the stimuli. N1 amplitude over fronto-central sites was significantly enhanced when the bilabial /pa/ sound was paired with tactile lip stimulation and when the finger-snapping sound was paired with tactile stimulation of the finger. Post-stimulus alpha desynchronization at central sites was also enhanced when the /pa/ sound was accompanied by tactile stimulation of the lip. These novel findings indicate that neural aspects of somatosensory-auditory interactions are influenced by the congruency between the location of the bodily touch and the bodily origin of a perceived sound.

Infant brain responses to felt and observed touch of hands and feet: an MEG study.

There is growing interest concerning the ways in which the human body, both one's own and that of others, is represented in the developing human brain. In two experiments with 7-month-old infants, we employed advances in infant magnetoencephalography (MEG) brain imaging to address novel questions concerning body representations in early development. Experiment 1 evaluated the spatiotemporal organization of infants' brain responses to being touched. A punctate touch to infants' hands and feet produced significant activation in the hand and foot areas of contralateral primary somatosensory cortex as well as in other parietal and frontal areas. Experiment 2 explored infant brain responses to visually perceiving another person's hand or foot being touched. Results showed significant activation in early visual regions and also in regions thought to be involved in multisensory body and self-other processing. Furthermore, observed touch of the hand and foot activated the infant's own primary somatosensory cortex, although less consistently than felt touch. These findings shed light on aspects of early social cognition, including action imitation, which may build, at least in part, on infant neural representations that map equivalences between the bodies of self and other.