Communication is inherently social and requires an efficient exchange of complex cues between individuals. What are the behavioral and neural processes that allow people to understand, couple to, and learn from others in complex, everyday interactions? My research examines the interpersonal dynamics of communication across the lifespan using behavioral, computational, and dual-brain neuroimaging techniques in real-life environments. To understand the real-time dynamics of communication between children and caregivers at the biological level, I have used brain-to-brain coupling as a measure of interpersonal alignment to predict communicative success and learning outcomes. In one study, we found that activation in the infant prefrontal cortex preceded and drove similar activation in the adult brain, a result that advances our understanding of children’s influence over the accommodative behaviors of caregivers. In other work, we have found that both pupillary synchrony and neural synchrony while listening to stories predicts preschoolers’ learning of new words. In ongoing work, we are quantifying the semantic structure of naturalistic speech and measuring how it relates to dynamic neural representations. This collection of findings provides a new understanding of how children’s and adults’ brains and behaviors both shape and reflect each other during everyday communication.
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