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1. Taking a Computational Cultural Neuroscience Approach to Study Parent-Child Similarities in Diverse Cultural Contexts

   https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2021.703999  

   Chen, Pin-Hao A.; Qu, Yang (August 2021, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience)

   null (Ed.)

   Parent-child similarities and discrepancies at multiple levels provide a window to understand the cultural transmission process. Although prior research has examined parent-child similarities at the belief, behavioral, and physiological levels across cultures, little is known about parent-child similarities at the neural level. The current review introduces an interdisciplinary computational cultural neuroscience approach, which utilizes computational methods to understand neural and psychological processes being involved during parent-child interactions at intra- and inter-personal level. This review provides three examples, including the application of intersubject representational similarity analysis to analyze naturalistic neuroimaging data, the usage of computer vision to capture non-verbal social signals during parent-child interactions, and unraveling the psychological complexities involved during real-time parent-child interactions based on their simultaneous recorded brain response patterns. We hope that this computational cultural neuroscience approach can provide researchers an alternative way to examine parent-child similarities and discrepancies across different cultural contexts and gain a better understanding of cultural transmission processes. 

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2. Family Cohesion Moderates the Relation between Parent-Child Neural Connectivity Pattern Similarity and Youth’s Emotional Adjustment

   https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0349-23.2023  

   Zhou, Zexi; Chen, Ya-Yun; Yang, Beiming; Qu, Yang; Lee, Tae-Ho (July 2023, The Journal of Neuroscience)

   Despite a recent surge in research examining parent-child neural similarity using fMRI, there remains a need for further investigation into how such similarity may play a role in children’s emotional adjustment. Moreover, no prior studies explored the potential contextual factors that may moderate the link between parent-child neural similarity and children’s developmental outcomes. In this study, thirty-two parent-youth dyads (parents: Mage = 43.53 years, 72% female; children: Mage = 11.69 years, 41% female) watched an emotion-evoking animated film while being scanned using the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We first quantified how similarly emotion network interacts with other brain regions in responding to the emotion-evoking film between parents and their children. We then examined how such parent-child neural similarity is associated with children’s emotional adjustment, with attention to the moderating role of family cohesion. Results revealed that higher parent-child similarity in functional connectivity pattern during movie viewing was associated with better emotional adjustment including less negative affect, lower anxiety, and greater ego resilience in youth. Moreover, such associations were significant only among families with higher cohesion, but not among families with lower cohesion. The findings advance our understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying how children thrive by being in sync and attuned with their parents, and provide novel empirical evidence that the effects of parent-child concordance at the neural level on children’s development are contextually dependent. 

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3. Family Theories in Child-Robot Interactions: Understanding Families as a Whole for Child-Robot Interaction Design

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3585088.3589386  

   Cagiltay, Bengisu; Mutlu, Bilge; Kerr, Margaret L (June 2023, IDC '23: Proceedings of the 22nd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference)

   In this work, we discuss a theoretically motivated family-centered design approach for child-robot interactions, adapted by Family Systems Theory (FST) and Family Ecological Model (FEM). Long-term engagement and acceptance of robots in the home is influenced by factors that surround the child and the family, such as child-sibling-parent relationships and family routines, rituals, and values. A family-centered approach to interaction design is essential when developing in-home technology for children, especially for social agents like robots with which they can form connections and relationships. We review related literature in family theories and connect it with child-robot interaction and child-computer interaction research. We present two case studies that exemplify how family theories, FST and FEM, can inform the integration of robots into homes, particularly research into child-robot and family-robot interaction. Finally, we pose five overarching recommendations for a family-centered design approach in child-robot interactions. 

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4. Using negative controls to identify causal effects with invalid instrumental variables

   https://doi.org/10.1093/biomet/asae064  

   Dukes, O; Richardson, D B; Shahn, Z; Robins, J M; Tchetgen_Tchetgen, E J (January 2025, Biometrika)

   Summary Many proposals for the identification of causal effects require an instrumental variable that satisfies strong, untestable unconfoundedness and exclusion restriction assumptions. In this paper, we show how one can potentially identify causal effects under violations of these assumptions by harnessing a negative control population or outcome. This strategy allows one to leverage subpopulations for whom the exposure is degenerate, and requires that the instrument-outcome association satisfies a certain parallel trend condition. We develop semiparametric efficiency theory for a general instrumental variable model, and obtain a multiply robust, locally efficient estimator of the average treatment effect in the treated. The utility of the estimators is demonstrated in simulation studies and an analysis of the Life Span Study. 

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5. Parent-child neural similarity: Measurements, antecedents, and consequences

   https://doi.org/10.3389/fcogn.2023.1113082  

   Qu, Yang; Zhou, Zexi; Lee, Tae-Ho (March 2023, Frontiers in Cognition)

   Children and their parents are wired to connect as it provides the foundation for developing children to adapt to an increasingly complex environment. Although extensive studies demonstrate the importance of parent-child dyadic similarity at the behavioral, psychological, and physiological levels in fostering children's learning and psychological wellbeing, little is known about parent-child similarity at the neural level until recently. Drawing on our own work and the work by other scholars, this review summarizes recent advances in empirical research on parent-child neural similarity. Specifically, this review elaborates the theoretical importance of studying parent-child neural similarity and showcases how parent-child neural similarity is assessed using different neuroimaging approaches. We further synthesize empirical evidence about the contextual and individual factors that may contribute to variability in parent-child neural similarity, summarize how such neural similarity is related to different aspects of child adjustment, and highlight important directions for future research. Taken together, we hope that this integrative review can demonstrate cutting-edge research that explores neural similarity in parent-child dyads, and provide researchers with a clear roadmap to examine parent-child neural similarity in order to gain a better understanding of parental socialization process and brain development. 

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