Different strategies, distinguished cooperation efficiency, and brain synchronization for couples: An fNIRS-based hyperscanning study.

Brain Behav

Developmental and Behavioral Pediatric Department & Child Primary Care Department, Brain and Behavioral Research Unit of Shanghai Institute for Pediatric Research, MOE-Shanghai Key Laboratory for Children's Environmental Health, Xinhua Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China.

Published: September 2020

Introduction: Individuals may employ different strategies when cooperating with others. For example, when two participants are asked to press buttons simultaneously, they may press the buttons as quickly as possible (immediate response strategy) or press them in a delayed pattern (delayed response strategy). Despite recognition of interpersonal brain synchronization (IBS) as a fundamental neural mechanism of cooperation, it remains unclear how various strategies influence cooperative behavior and its neural activities.

Methods: To address this issue, 43 married couples were recruited to complete a button-press cooperative task, during which IBS was recorded by functional near-infrared spectroscopy hyperscanning.

Results: Behavioral results showed that couples who adopted a delayed response strategy performed better than those who adopted an immediate response strategy and those without any obvious strategy, and a new measure (cooperation coefficient) was used to index the level of cooperation. In addition, stronger IBS in the right frontal cortex was observed in the delayed response condition. The greater couples' perceived parenting stress, the more likely they were to perform well in tasks and the stronger their brain synchronization, since they tended to choose the delayed response strategy.

Conclusion: The delayed response strategy may better unify dyad partners' response modes, trigger synchronized psychological processes, and enable their brains to become synchronized. The study extends understanding of cooperation by comparing the contributions of different strategies underlying cooperative behavior with corresponding neural evidence.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7507397PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/brb3.1768DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

response strategy
20
delayed response
20
brain synchronization
12
press buttons
8
response
8
cooperative behavior
8
strategy
6
delayed
6
cooperation
5
strategies
4

Similar Publications

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!