The Effect of Empathy on Collaborative Remembering from A Second-Person Perspective

Zhang Huan; Li Jingwen; Wang Haiman; Ahati Shamali; He Yunfeng; Lu Chunming

doi:10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20230528

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Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2023, Vol. 46 ›› Issue (5) : 1254-1261. DOI: 10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20230528

Clinical Psychology & Consulting

The Effect of Empathy on Collaborative Remembering from A Second-Person Perspective

Zhang Huan^1,2,3, Li Jingwen², Wang Haiman², Ahati Shamali², He Yunfeng⁴, Lu Chunming⁵

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Abstract

People usually retrieve and share past experience or knowledge with others, which promotes the formation of collective memory shared within group members. As a fundamental ability to collaborate with others, the effect of empathy on collaborative remembering has attracted widespread interest. Evidence based on behavioral studies has speculated that during the collaborative remembering process of two or more people, the speaker's selective retrieval practice of target items could induce the listener's synchronous “covert retrieval”. Neuroscience studies at the single-brain level revealed that the listener's brain activity during listening to the speaker's selective retrieval practice was similar to that of speaker in the process of remembering. In daily life, however, remembering takes place in a real-time two-way social interaction. Therefore, this study adopted a second-person perspective, and investigated the brain mechanisms of memory retrieval in social interaction and the effect of empathy in this process.
We used the retrieval practice paradigm of two-person interaction in the current study. All the participants were randomly paired into speaker-listener dyads. The neural activities in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and right temporal parietal junction (rTPJ) of both the speaker and the listener in each dyad were simultaneously recorded, using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)-based hyperscanning while they performed the interactive retrieval task. After the final retrieval test, the proportion of correct retrieval of related items was assessed. In order to measure the empathy index, all the participants were asked to complete the scale of “the Empathy Quotient, (EQ)” before the experiment.
Behavioral analysis showed that the dyads' empathy was positively correlated with their retrieval accuracy of related items under the retrieval practice paradigm of two-person interaction. The functional imaging results showed that compared to resting state, the interpersonal neural synchronization (INS) in right the temporal parietal junction (rTPJ) was significantly increased during collaborative remembering. Combining the behavioral results with the imaging results, we found that the increased INS in rTPJ was positively correlated with empathy and the retrieval accuracy of related items respectively. Finally, such increased INS mediated the relationship between empathy and the retrieval accuracy of related items in speaker-listener dyads.
To sum up, this study demonstrated that empathy had an effect on the outcome of collaborative remembering. In the process of this real-time social interaction, the INS in rTPJ was significantly increased compared to resting state, and such increased INS mediated the contribution of empathy to the retrieval accuracy of related items in speaker-listener dyads. Our results further support that the INS plays an important role in the study of social interaction as a reliable neuro-marker for measuring the relationship between two interactive brains.

Key words

empathy / collaborative remembering / second-person perspective / interpersonal neural synchronization (INS)

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Zhang Huan, Li Jingwen, Wang Haiman, Ahati Shamali, He Yunfeng, Lu Chunming. The Effect of Empathy on Collaborative Remembering from A Second-Person Perspective[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2023, 46(5): 1254-1261 https://doi.org/10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20230528

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