Bulgarelli Chiara, Pinti Paola, Aburumman Nadine, Jones Emily J H
Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck, University of London, Malet St, London, WC1E 7HX, UK.
Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, UK.
Oxf Open Neurosci. 2023 Dec 15;2:kvad012. doi: 10.1093/oons/kvad012. eCollection 2023.
A child's social world is complex and rich, but has traditionally been assessed with conventional experiments where children are presented with repeated stimuli on a screen. These assessments are impoverished relative to the dynamics of social interactions in real life, and can be challenging to implement with preschoolers, who struggle to comply with strict lab rules. The current work meets the need to develop new platforms to assess preschoolers' social development, by presenting a unique virtual-reality set-up combined with wearable functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). As a proof-of-principle, we validated this platform by measuring brain activity during self-guided social interaction in 3-to-5-year-olds, which is under-investigated, yet crucial to understand the basis of social interactions in preschoolers. 37 preschoolers chose an interaction partner from one of 4 human-like avatars of different gender and age. We recorded spontaneous brain fluctuations from the frontal and temporoparietal regions (notably engaged in social-categorization and preference) while children played a bubble-popping game with a preferred and an assigned avatar. 60% of the participants chose to play with the same-gender and same-age avatar. However, this result was driven by females (>80% vs. 50% in males). Different fronto-temporoparietal connectivity patterns when playing with the two avatars were observed, especially in females. We showed the feasibility of using a novel set-up to naturalistically assess social preference in preschoolers, which was assessed at the behavioural and functional connectivity level. This work provides a first proof-of-principle for using cutting-edge technologies and naturalistic experiments to study social development, opening new avenues of research.
儿童的社交世界复杂而丰富，但传统上是通过常规实验来评估的，在这些实验中，孩子们会在屏幕上面对重复的刺激。相对于现实生活中社交互动的动态性，这些评估较为匮乏，而且对于难以遵守严格实验室规则的学龄前儿童来说，实施起来可能具有挑战性。当前的研究通过提出一种独特的虚拟现实设置并结合可穿戴功能近红外光谱（fNIRS），满足了开发新平台以评估学龄前儿童社交发展的需求。作为原理验证，我们通过测量3至5岁儿童在自主社交互动过程中的大脑活动，验证了这个平台，这方面的研究较少，但对于理解学龄前儿童社交互动的基础至关重要。37名学龄前儿童从4个不同性别和年龄的类人化虚拟角色中选择了一个互动伙伴。当孩子们与一个偏好的和一个指定的虚拟角色玩泡泡游戏时，我们记录了额叶和颞顶叶区域（特别参与社会分类和偏好）的自发脑波动。60%的参与者选择与同性和同龄的虚拟角色玩耍。然而，这一结果主要由女性驱动（女性>80%，男性为50%）。观察到与两个虚拟角色玩耍时不同的额颞顶叶连接模式，尤其是在女性中。我们展示了使用一种新颖的设置来自然地评估学龄前儿童社交偏好的可行性，该评估在行为和功能连接层面进行。这项工作为使用前沿技术和自然主义实验研究社交发展提供了首个原理验证，开辟了新的研究途径。
