Sync game indicates greater similarity in children

A new study has shown that a simple game played together in sync on a computer has led 8-year-olds to report a greater sense of similarity and closeness immediately after the activity.

The investigation was led by a researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle, USA, and funded by the European Research Council. The study also found that children who played the same game but not in a synchronous way did not report the same increase in connection.

Synchrony occurs when people interact together in time and is considered a fundamental prerequisite for activities such as playing music, singing, dancing and rowing. Yet the impact of synchrony goes beyond the ability to co-ordinate activities with other individuals. In adults, synchrony has been linked to increased co-operation and teamwork, making work more efficient and productive, yet few studies have examined whether the same is true among children.

The experiment was led by postdoctoral fellow Tal-Chen Rabinowitch and took place at Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. She tested 74 8-year-old children in pairs of two boys and two girls. The children were introduced to each other by name only and viewed a short film of an animated football that bounced on both halves of the screen; the children pressed a button whenever the ball on their side of the screen hit the floor. For some pairs of children, the balls bounced in sync, so their fingers tapped the buttons simultaneously. Other pairs of children had out-of-sync bouncing, so they had asynchronous finger tapping.

After two 90-second trials of the game, the children filled out questionnaires about how similar and close they felt to the child they had been paired with. A control group of pairs of children answered the same questions, but did not perform the game. Children in the synchronous group reported a greater sense of similarity and closeness.

The findings suggest that time-based synchronised activities, including in music, dance and sports, could be useful tools in bringing children closer together. Commenting, Rabinowitch said: “Synchrony is like a glue that brings people together – it’s a magical connector for people.

“The important ingredient is joint synchronised activity – it is a form of collaboration where individuals perform the same movements at the same time.”

Rabinowitch added that studying this phenomenon in children is particularly important as the connection between music and social and emotional attitudes are often established early in life.

The findings are published by PLOS ONE.