Oscillatory neural and autonomic correlates of social attunedness during early life: new mechanistic insights into how we learn to learn from one another

We are a social species. Most infants, and young children, spend the majority of their early waking lives in the company of others. But, for practical reasons, almost everything that we know about how the brain subserves early attention and learning comes from studies that examined brain function in one individual at a time. This means that we understand lots about how children attend and learn from information presented while they are alone, viewing a computer screen - but little about how attention is shared between people during social interaction. ONASCA will develop new techniques to look, for the first time, at how two brains dynamically interact with one another during early learning exchanges. The project will determine how children’s active, participatory bids during learning lead to reactive changes in both members of the dyad – and how these changes, in turn, influence both partners’ subsequent attention, and learning. It will also determine how, and why, some infants, and some parents, show greater sensitivity during social exchanges than others. And, using targeted interventions, it will investigate whether social sensitivity can be improved. The question of how two brains dynamically influence one another during learning exchanges has been described as the ‘dark matter’ of social neuroscience. Yet nobody has looked at these questions before from the perspective of early learning. Our results may help us to move beyond viewing children primarily as passive recipients of information during learning exchanges, to a perspective that better appreciates children’s role as active participants in learning. Our findings may also have practical implications for educationalists, and clinicians.