The Impact of Language Context on Inter-Brain Synchrony in Bilingual Families

Efstratia Papoutselou^1,2*Nivetha Saravanan^1,2Guangting Mai^1,2,3,4Samantha Harrison^1,2Hilal Dogan^1,2Douglas Edward Hugh Hartley^1,2,5

• ¹Hearing, NIHR Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre, Nottingham, United Kingdom
• ²Otology & Hearing Group, Division of Clinical Neuroscience, University of Nottingham School of Medicine, Nottingham, United Kingdom
• ³MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom
• ⁴University College London Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, London, United Kingdom
• ⁵Queen's Medical Centre, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, Nottingham, United Kingdom

Background: Bilingualism is increasingly common in families worldwide, yet bilingual individuals remain underrepresented in developmental neuroscience research. In simultaneous bilingualism, children typically acquire two languages simultaneously from birth, while their parents tend to learn the societal language later in life. These differences in language acquisition may influence how parents and children communicate, particularly when interacting in a second language. Neural synchrony, the temporal alignment of brain activity between individuals, has emerged as a key mechanism underlying social connection, communication, and learning in early development. However, little is known about how language choice affects neural synchrony in bilingual parent–child interactions. Methods: This study used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning to simultaneously record brain activity from 15 bilingual mother–child dyads during naturalistic play. Each dyad completed three conditions: collaborative play in the mother's native language, collaborative play in English (the mother's second language), and independent play. Neural activity was recorded from the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and temporoparietal junction (TPJ), regions associated with social cognition, joint attention, and mentalising. Families took part in a naturalistic free play paradigm, allowing them to interact in a comfortable and ecologically valid manner. Results: Both native-and English-language play elicited significantly greater neural synchrony across the PFC and the TPJ than independent play, validating the use of naturalistic free play paradigms. No significant overall differences emerged between native and English play, indicating that bilingual dyads maintain inter-brain coupling across languages when both partners are proficient. Exploratory analyses suggested a trend towards higher child-directed synchrony in English play and age-related trends in mother-directed synchrony; however, these effects did not reach statistical significance. Discussion: Our findings show that bilingualism does not compromise mother–child neural synchrony, supporting the inclusion of linguistically diverse families in developmental neuroscience. They underscore the value of naturalistic paradigms and highlight the need for future research on language proficiency, partner familiarity, and behavioural correlates of synchrony. This work highlights the importance of studying bilingual families in ecologically valid contexts to better understand how language use influences neural coupling in early development.