Associations of authoritarian parenting with parent-adolescent interbrain synchrony in emotional co-experiencing situations

Authoritarian parenting styles could undermine the relationship between parents and their adolescents. Despite the same parenting styles, mothers and fathers tend to play distinct parenting roles, leading to different parent-adolescent interaction patterns. Investigating the differences in effects between authoritarian paternal and maternal parenting styles on the parent-adolescent emotional shared activities provides insight into adolescent parenting. The present study used the electroencephalography hyperscanning technique to examine parent-adolescent interbrain synchrony (IBS) during a video co-viewing task, focusing on the effects of parental overprotection and overinvolvement. The results showed that parent-adolescent IBS in the beta and gamma bands were negatively correlated with authoritarian paternal parenting style levels. However, parent-adolescent IBS in the beta band was positively correlated with authoritarian maternal parenting style levels. These findings expand the neural basis underlying parent-adolescent emotional shared activities under authoritarian paternal and maternal parenting styles, emphasizing the significance of recognizing fathers' and mothers' differences in adolescent parenting.