Toddler EEG power reflects behavioral social engagement state during naturalistic parent-child interaction

Brittany L. Manning, Megan Y. Roberts, Lauren S. Wakschlag, Elizabeth S. Norton

Social engagement is a critical process for language and social development and is altered in neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism. Although previous EEG studies have investigated correlates of children's social development in closely controlled experimental studies, fewer studies have examined how the brain reflects meaningful behavioral states, such as social engagement, within naturalistic parent-child interaction. This study collected EEG from typically developing toddlers with varying language ability and their parent (n = 49, 24–44 months) during the Social EEG paradigm, which included contexts of dyadic interaction (book reading and puzzle play) and baseline (movie watching). Videos of the session were coded for social engagement using moment-by-moment, behavioral coding and applied to the EEG data. As predicted, EEG alpha power decreased (p < .001) and theta power increased (p < .005) during social engagement relative to baseline movie engagement. Further, the same pattern was replicated in an independent sample (n = 24, 25–48 months) including children diagnosed with autism. These results demonstrate for the first time that EEG power is associated with naturally occurring moments of parent-child social engagement across a range of ages, social, and linguistic abilities, opening avenues for study of more naturalistic and meaningful developmental constructs.

The moment-by-moment coding of engagement states was carried out with Mangold INTERACT.