Neural responses to socioemotional information are more similar among siblings and relate to social competence
Abstract
Socioemotional skills are fundamental to children’s well-being and development, yet the neurodevelopmental processes through which familial relationships contribute to these skills remain poorly understood. While socioemotional skills are partly heritable, they are also shaped by social learning through interactions with others, including siblings. Sibling relationships represent one of the earliest and most enduring social contexts throughout development and provide a valuable context for investigating how familial relatedness is reflected in children's neural processing of socioemotional information. However, little is known about whether siblings exhibit similarities in these neural responses and how such similarities relate to socioemotional behavior. In this study, we investigated whether sibling dyads show greater similarity in neural responses during socioemotional processing than unrelated child dyads and whether such neural similarity is associated with socioemotional functioning. To assess this, 120 children (6-14 years), including 39 sibling dyads, completed a naturalistic fMRI movie-watching task designed to elicit socioemotional responses. Results showed that sibling dyads exhibited greater whole-brain functional neural similarity during socioemotional processing than unrelated children across the whole brain. Region- of-interest analyses further revealed greater functional neural similarity among siblings across several prefrontal, temporal, and limbic regions, including the left ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Moreover, greater similarity in left vmPFC responses, a region implicated in social cognition, was associated with higher levels of socially competent behavior in both sibling and unrelated dyads, suggesting that neural similarity may be particularly pronounced among children with higher social competence. These findings highlight sibling relationships as an informative context for investigating familial similarities in neural responses to socioemotional information and their associations with socioemotional behavior during childhood.
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BibTeX
@misc{scatolin2026neural,
title = {{Neural responses to socioemotional information are more similar among siblings and relate to social competence}},
author = {Sofia Scatolin and Elena Federici and Plamina Dimanova and Dennis Saikkonen and Jonathan Bugmann and Nora Raschle},
howpublished = {PsyArXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.31234/osf.io/gjwkr_v1},
url = {https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/gjwkr_v1/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Neural responses to socioemotional information are more similar among siblings and relate to social competence
AU - Sofia Scatolin
AU - Elena Federici
AU - Plamina Dimanova
AU - Dennis Saikkonen
AU - Jonathan Bugmann
AU - Nora Raschle
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/06
PB - PsyArXiv
DO - 10.31234/osf.io/gjwkr_v1
UR - https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/gjwkr_v1/
AB - Socioemotional skills are fundamental to children’s well-being and development, yet the neurodevelopmental processes through which familial relationships contribute to these skills remain poorly understood. While socioemotional skills are partly heritable, they are also shaped by social learning through interactions with others, including siblings. Sibling relationships represent one of the earliest and most enduring social contexts throughout development and provide a valuable context for investigating how familial relatedness is reflected in children's neural processing of socioemotional information. However, little is known about whether siblings exhibit similarities in these neural responses and how such similarities relate to socioemotional behavior. In this study, we investigated whether sibling dyads show greater similarity in neural responses during socioemotional processing than unrelated child dyads and whether such neural similarity is associated with socioemotional functioning. To assess this, 120 children (6-14 years), including 39 sibling dyads, completed a naturalistic fMRI movie-watching task designed to elicit socioemotional responses. Results showed that sibling dyads exhibited greater whole-brain functional neural similarity during socioemotional processing than unrelated children across the whole brain. Region- of-interest analyses further revealed greater functional neural similarity among siblings across several prefrontal, temporal, and limbic regions, including the left ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Moreover, greater similarity in left vmPFC responses, a region implicated in social cognition, was associated with higher levels of socially competent behavior in both sibling and unrelated dyads, suggesting that neural similarity may be particularly pronounced among children with higher social competence. These findings highlight sibling relationships as an informative context for investigating familial similarities in neural responses to socioemotional information and their associations with socioemotional behavior during childhood.
ER -