Generation WhatsApp: inter-brain synchrony during face-to-face and texting communication.

Texting has become one of the most prevalent ways to interact socially, particularly among youth; however, the effects of text messaging on social brain functioning are unknown. Guided by the biobehavioral synchrony frame, this pre-registered study utilized hyperscanning EEG to evaluate interbrain synchrony during face-to-face versus texting interactions. Participants included 65 mother-adolescent dyads observed during face-to-face conversation compared to texting from different rooms. Results indicate that both face-to-face and texting communication elicit significant neural synchrony compared to surrogate data, demonstrating for the first time brain-to-brain synchrony during texting. Direct comparison between the two interactions highlighted 8 fronto-temporal interbrain links that were significantly stronger in the face-to-face interaction compared to texting. Our findings suggest that partners co-create a fronto-temporal network of inter-brain connections during live social exchanges. The degree of improvement in the partners' right-frontal-right-frontal connectivity from texting to the live social interaction correlated with greater behavioral synchrony, suggesting that this well-researched neural connection may be specific to face-to-face communication. Our findings suggest that while technology-based communication allows humans to synchronize from afar, face-to-face interactions remain the superior mode of communication for interpersonal connection. We conclude by discussing the potential benefits and drawbacks of the pervasive use of texting, particularly among youth.

The social-encoding benefit in face recognition is generalized to other-race faces.

Faces are visual stimuli that convey rich social information. Previous experiments found better recognition for faces that were evaluated based on their social traits than on their perceptual features during encoding. Here, we ask whether this social-encoding benefit in face recognition is also found for categories of faces that we have no previous social experience with, such as other-race faces. To answer this question, we first explored whether social and perceptual evaluations for other-race faces are consistent and valid. We then asked whether social evaluations during encoding improve recognition for other-race faces. Results show that social and perceptual evaluations of own- and other-race faces were valid. We also found high agreement in social and perceptual evaluations across individuals from different races. This indicates that evaluations of other-race faces are not random but meaningful. Furthermore, we found that social evaluations facilitated face recognition regardless of race, demonstrating a social-encoding benefit for both own- and other-race faces. Our findings highlight the role of social information in face recognition and show how it can be used to improve recognition of categories of faces that are hard to recognize due to lack of experience with them.

Technologically-assisted communication attenuates inter-brain synchrony.

The transition to technologically-assisted communication has permeated all facets of human social life; yet, its impact on the social brain is still unknown and the effects may be particularly intense during periods of developmental transitions. Applying a two-brain perspective, the current preregistered study utilized hyperscanning EEG to measure brain-to-brain synchrony in 62 mother-child pairs at the transition to adolescence (child age; M = 12.26, range 10-14) during live face-to-face interaction versus technologically-assisted remote communication. The live interaction elicited 9 significant cross-brain links between densely inter-connected frontal and temporal areas in the beta range [14-30 Hz]. Mother's right frontal region connected with the child's right and left frontal, temporal, and central regions, suggesting its regulatory role in organizing the two-brain dynamics. In contrast, the remote interaction elicited only 1 significant cross-brain-cross-hemisphere link, attenuating the robust right-to-right-brain connectivity during live social moments that communicates socio-affective signals. Furthermore, while the level of social behavior was comparable between the two interactions, brain-behavior associations emerged only during the live exchange. Mother-child right temporal-temporal synchrony linked with moments of shared gaze and the degree of child engagement and empathic behavior correlated with right frontal-frontal synchrony. Our findings indicate that human co-presence is underpinned by specific neurobiological processes that should be studied in depth. Much further research is needed to tease apart whether the "Zoom fatigue" experienced during technological communication may stem, in part, from overload on more limited inter-brain connections and to address the potential cost of social technology for brain maturation, particularly among youth.

Independent contribution of perceptual experience and social cognition to face recognition.

Faces convey rich perceptual and social information. The contribution of perceptual and social information to face recognition has been typically examined in separate experiments. Here, we take a comprehensive approach by studying the contributions of both perceptual experience and social-conceptual information to face learning within the same experimental design. The effect of perceptual experience was examined by systematically varying the similarity between the learned and test face views. Social information was manipulated by asking participants to make social, perceptual, or no evaluations on faces during learning. Results show better recognition for the learned views, which declines as a function of the dissimilarity between the learned and unlearned views. Additionally, processing faces as social concepts produced a general gain in performance of a similar magnitude for both the learned and unlearned views. We concluded that both social-conceptual and perceptual information contribute to face recognition but through complementary, independent mechanisms. These findings highlight the importance of considering both cognition and perception to obtain comprehensive understanding of face recognition.

Learning faces as concepts rather than percepts improves face recognition.

Our ability to recognize familiar faces is remarkable. During the process of becoming familiar with new people we acquire both perceptual and conceptual information about them. Which of these two types of information contributes to our ability to recognize a person in future encounters? Previously, we showed that associating faces with person-related conceptual information (e.g., name, occupation) during learning improves face recognition. Here, we provide further evidence and assess several possible accounts to the conceptual encoding benefit in face recognition. In a series of experiments, participants were asked to make perceptual (e.g., how round/symmetric is the face?) or conceptual (e.g., how trustworthy/intelligent does the face look?) evaluations about faces. We found better face recognition following conceptual than perceptual encoding. We further showed that this effect cannot be attributed to more global than part-based feature processing, more variable ratings, or more elaborative encoding during conceptual than perceptual evaluations. Finally, we showed that the conceptual over perceptual encoding advantage reflects a conceptual encoding benefit rather than a perceptual encoding cost. Overall these findings show that conceptual evaluations do not improve recognition by modifying the perceptual representation of a face (e.g., elaboration, global processing). Instead, we propose that face recognition benefits from representing faces as socially meaningful concepts rather than percepts during learning. These results highlight the importance of linking cognition and perception to understand recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

The roles of perceptual and conceptual information in face recognition.

The representation of familiar objects is comprised of perceptual information about their visual properties as well as the conceptual knowledge that we have about them. What is the relative contribution of perceptual and conceptual information to object recognition? Here, we examined this question by designing a face familiarization protocol during which participants were either exposed to rich perceptual information (viewing each face in different angles and illuminations) or with conceptual information (associating each face with a different name). Both conditions were compared with single-view faces presented with no labels. Recognition was tested on new images of the same identities to assess whether learning generated a view-invariant representation. Results showed better recognition of novel images of the learned identities following association of a face with a name label, but no enhancement following exposure to multiple face views. Whereas these findings may be consistent with the role of category learning in object recognition, face recognition was better for labeled faces only when faces were associated with person-related labels (name, occupation), but not with person-unrelated labels (object names or symbols). These findings suggest that association of meaningful conceptual information with an image shifts its representation from an image-based percept to a view-invariant concept. They further indicate that the role of conceptual information should be considered to account for the superior recognition that we have for familiar faces and objects. (PsycINFO Database Record