Written by Bhakti Patwardhan, UC Davis SES Lab Research Assistant
Introduction to Synchrony Synchrony, as in “being in sync,” is the concept of being coordinated with someone: two people who have been friends for a long time may say that their habits, thoughts, and feelings often are synchronous with one another. There are a whole host of quantifiable factors that may be in sync between two individuals. Behavior, such as facial expressions, gaze, and vocalizations can be in sync; internal states such as affect (feelings/moods) can be in sync; and physiological parameters such as heartrate or hormone levels can be in sync. Synchrony, as the paper “Parent–Infant Synchrony: Biological Foundations and Developmental Outcomes” by Ruth Feldman explains, has three general components: behavior, individual, and time. The first one, behavior (or characteristic), is what we are measuring in order to figure out whether it is in sync. The second – individuals – are what displays the behavior/characteristic; sometimes, instead of focusing on people, specific organs or organ systems are looked at as the displayers of behavior. Time is the third and final aspect: two things that are synchronous must follow each other in time, and preferably with a very small gap in time. Synchrony is focused on extensively by psychologists and researchers, because it can lead to the discovery of interesting and unexpected connections. The paper gives mention to the discovery that newborns sync their leg movements with adult speech. Another intriguing finding is about the cry patterns of babies: as it turns out, these have specific sequences that try to serve as communicators to the babies’ caregivers. There are many studies which explore how parents and their babies coordinate gazes, vocalizations, states of arousal (how energetic they are). Although there is a lot of literature looking at synchrony between parents and babies, there still are some questions that could be explored more thoroughly. One thing that could be explored is the change and development in the way parents and babies sync over long period of time – perhaps till the first couple of years of the baby’s life. Another thing to focus on is the biological basis of synchrony: how it happens, and what biological/physiological factors play a role in it. The third question is the connection of synchrony to complex cognitive and social behaviors: can synchrony between parents and very young babies predict these children’s behaviors later in life? The fourth question the paper proposes is the effect of risky conditions on synchrony: if a mother is depressed, for instance, in what way would this affect how in sync she was with her baby and their needs? Synchrony Over The Span of An Year The multi-faceted study presented in this paper tries to explore all four of these questions, beginning with the first one. The researchers regularly measured synchrony between babies and their parents from the birth of the child till they were three years of age. They noticed that there was synchrony in the periods of alertness displayed by a newborn, and the attention/stimulation that their mother gave them. Mothers began engaging their babies with vocalizations and touch as soon as they noticed that they were alert, and babies quickly became even more attentive as they noticed their mother interacting with them. Even at birth, babies tune themselves to their caregiver’s stimulation. Within the first six months, babies and parents not only displayed synchronous behaviors, but also settled into set patterns of them. Often, these behaviors were concurrent (baby and parent vocalize or look at each other at the same time). They could also be sequential: babies started displaying positive feelings/affect right after their mothers did, or babbled more when their mothers looked at them. Often, these little shifts created what the paper describes effectively as a “dance” between the mother and the baby: they coordinated their feelings, their gazes, and their vocalizations with each other. In family settings, young babies switch their focus within seconds after a change in behavior between mother and father. Even at such a young age, babies were actively interacting and adapting to their caregivers and, as the paper aptly puts it, engaging in what forms the backbone of human “dialogue.” As the child nears their first birthday, they start using symbols in words and play, and parents adapt, forming patterns of play, gestures, and symbolic interactions. Another interesting development is the emergence of patterns that are specific to one pair: patterns differ between father and mother, and these are preserved as the child grows. While observing positive interactions between three-year-old children and their parents, the researchers noticed that interactions with mom followed a pattern where she and the child shared mutual glances first, while interactions with dad happened quickly and sporadically. Not only is there behavioral synchrony between a child and their parents, this synchrony gets more and more complex as the child ages, while at the same time preserving patterns the child formed with their caregivers in infancy. Biological Underpinnings of Synchrony Now that the question of how synchrony changes over a long period of time has been addressed, the paper moves on to answer the second question: what biological/physiological factors play a role in synchrony? The idea that social rhythms or synchrony may be based in biological rhythms has been around for a while, says the paper, but never explicitly tested. The paper tests this idea by focusing on two biological rhythms: circadian (sleep-wake) cycle, and heart rhythms. These two were chosen because form the foundation for many other indicators like affect, arousal (energy), hunger, etc. The development and synchrony in these rhythms predicted the behavioral synchrony between caregiver and baby at three months of age: it seems that these biological rhythms are indeed connected to social synchrony. There were more varied instances noted of biological markers predicting synchrony. In a “face still-face” task, where mothers interact freely with their babies for a certain number of minutes with a few minutes of “still-face” (blank, poker face at the baby no matter what it does) in the middle, the researchers found that the heartrate of the mother coordinated with a change in heartrate with the child, usually within a second. Babies who were better able to regulate their heartrate during the stressful “still-face” minutes were also better synchronized with their mothers in free play, when she interacted normally with them. If a mother had more of the hormone oxytocin (linked to bonding) in her system while pregnant, she was more likely to be better at synchronizing with her child later on. And there is still more – greater synchrony was linked to greater activation in parts of the brain linked to empathy, parenting, and emotion regulation. It seems that biological factors and synchrony are definitely linked, and they predict each other. The third question that the researchers wanted to explore was whether synchrony during early childhood was linked/predicted outcomes later in childhood and even young adulthood – as it turns out, it sure does. Better synchrony between parents and baby when the baby was 3 months old and 9 months old predicted better attachment to parents when they were one year old. Babies which had good synchrony as infants were better at regulating themselves at 2, 4, and 6 years old (they participated in a task where their parent would command them to do something, or told them to keep away from something they badly wanted, like a toy or a snack). Better synchrony was linked to better IQ levels, measured when the babies were two and four years old; it was also linked to more use of emotive/expressive words, and complex use of symbols at the age of two and three respectively. It goes even further – better synchrony was linked to better empathy in the same individual when they were an adolescent at 12 years old. Synchrony is indeed linked to far-reaching outcomes in the baby as it grows, and even as the individual is entering adulthood. Synchrony in Risk Conditions The fourth, and final, question that the scientists put forward was how levels of syncing change in risk conditions, and it seems risk conditions are linked to lower levels of synchrony. During a study where infant brain activation was measured while they looked at their mothers making different faces portraying different affect/feeling, infants with depressed mothers reacted more to their mom’s angry face; they also had very little synchrony with her. Preterm infants, compared to premature infants, displayed less syncing in gazes with their mother. Parents taking care of triplets were as attentive to each of their children, but their attention was uncoordinated with infant signals; and this predicted the triplets’ lower social/emotional adjustment when they were two years old. The last part of this section of the paper talked about mothers with depression and mothers with anxiety. As aforementioned, mothers with depressed had no synchrony with their babies, and additionally, they established no behavior patterns with their child. When it came to mothers with clinical anxiety, it was a bit different: these mothers smiled, vocalized, and interacted in normal amounts with their baby, but they often did so when the baby needed rest: unlike depressed mothers, their social behaviors were at normal levels, but they were uncoordinated with their baby. The paper provided evidence for the fact that synchrony is established and develops in a predictable way during infancy and early childhood, and that it predicts behavioral and affective outcomes during later stages of childhood and even adolescence. Finally, it also showed that synchrony is affected in risk conditions; knowing that it is linked to better behavioral/emotional outcomes, this may have far-reaching consequences for babies growing up in risk conditions. Some questions that still need to be explores in this vein could be, for instance, more on how synchrony patterns that babies establish with their parents while very young are preserved as they grow (like parent-specific interactions). In addition, while this paper demonstrated that biological factors are correlated with synchrony, there still could be more research on what the causal relationship between them is. On a broader level, this paper, and most papers relating to synchrony, focus more on the socioemotional aspect of it: how it affects social interaction, how it affects feelings and expression of feelings, and so on. If synchrony is linked to far-reaching outcomes in this aspect, does it have connections to cognition and cognitive outcomes? Children and students in academic environments often say that it is easier to understand material and perform on tests if you are in sync with the teacher’s style of teaching and their method of asking questions. Could being in sync, in some aspect of behavior or a biological factor, predict better cognitive outcomes? This is the focus of one of the studies that the SES lab is conducting right now. It aims to explore whether synchrony is related to cognitive outcomes in children. One on hand, this study builds on this paper, because social skills and interactions are also a form of cognition – social cognition. On another hand, it heads in a fresh direction, and hopes to reveal a different facet of synchrony and its implications.
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Hello everyone!
My name is Maya Sahtout and I am one of the undergraduate research assistants for the Biobehavioral Synchrony Meta-Analysis. Currently, I am a third year at UC Davis studying Biological Science and minoring in Anthropology with a Sociocultural emphasis. For my research interests, I am very interested in learning about how the environment can influence the health and functioning of individuals. I love learning about the different processes in the body and how those can be affected by a variety of different causes, such as stress, environment, and much more. Also, I am passionate about learning about preventative health and care for individuals. In the future, I hope to become a medical doctor and work in public health. I plan to graduate from UC Davis in the year of 2022, take a gap year or a few to do research and clinical work, and then apply to medical school. For the particular specialty, I am hoping to go into pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, or family medicine. Furthermore, I hope to work with underserved communities in public health and work on alleviating health disparities and barriers in those communities. So far, I have been working on the Biobehavioral Synchrony Meta-Analysis for two months. My experience has been great! Currently, we are screening abstracts for the project. This project is my first time working on a meta-analysis and it has been enlightening learning about how a meta-analysis works and what the screening process is like. Each week, I work on reading abstracts for a variety of research papers. Just by reading the abstracts I am able to learn more about what synchrony is, the range of topics under synchrony, and the types of studies that have been done with synchrony. In addition, I am learning how to comprehend and read research papers. I am very excited to continue the Meta-Analysis and learn more about biobehavioral synchrony! Synchrony is so important in our day to day lives. By learning more about it, we may be able to incorporate synchrony where it is beneficial for behavior and neurobiology, such as with learning, development, and relationships. |
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