Teacher-Student Inter-Brain and Behavioral Synchronies in Remote Education

Abstract

Interpersonal synchrony plays a crucial role in education. This study investigated inter-brain synchrony (IBS) during remote education and its effects on learning outcomes, rapport, and behavioral synchrony. Twenty-eight participants conducted a vocabulary learning task with a remote teacher under two conditions: voice and webcam conditions. The results showed that participants formed a higher IBS with the remote teacher in the webcam condition. We also observed that the brain regions of frontopolar prefrontal cortex (FP-PFC) and left orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) were positively associated with learning outcomes and rapport, respectively. Furthermore, we observed that the concurrent behavioral synchrony (BS) of eye movements was related to IBS in the left OFC. Our findings provide valuable insights for future research on interpersonal synchrony and their implications for the development of effective teaching methodologies in remote education.