Poster #11 - The Short-Term Effects of Adult Redirection and Sensitivity on Infant Attention

• In Event: 2-163 - Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Section - Attention, Learning, Memory

Integrative Statement

What mechanisms influence infant attention during social interactions? Previous research has found that infants tend to attend to held objects (Yu & Smith, 2015). However, less is known about the influence of social interaction characteristics and their associated reward value on subsequent infant attention. Previously, infants’ short-term experience with contingent interactions influenced subsequent visual attention in a nonsocial contingency task (Dunham & Dunham, 1990). We explored infant attention following scripted social interactions in a conditioned place preference (CPP) paradigm, usually used to assess reward in non-human animals (Aguilar et al., 2009). In the CPP paradigm, an individual learns to associate stimuli with two distinctive rooms, permitting assessment of the reward value associated with each stimulus. The present study thus assessed the reward associated with different interaction styles to determine whether the experience of reward or interaction style influences subsequent infant attention.
Thirty infants (9-10 months) engaged in 15min of naturalistic play with their parents. Then, infants explored two visually-distinct neighboring curtained rooms for two minutes while the divider between rooms was removed, to determine their baseline room preference (Figure 1). Next, the divider was replaced, and a confederate played with infants in each room, for two 3-min trials each; in one room, the confederate engaged infants in a sensitive interaction (i.e. engaging with the same toys that infants attended to). In the other, the confederate was redirective (i.e. directing infant attention to toys outside infant’s attentional focus). Then, the divider between the two rooms was drawn back, and infants again explored the two rooms for 2min, to determine whether interactions yielded a shift in infant room preference. Lastly, the confederate brought infants into one of the two rooms. There, they engaged infants in a 12-trial social cue task in which the confederate presented two toys and directed infant attention to one toy with one of four types of cues: (1) gaze at the toy (2) name the toy (“This is a Blicket. See the Blicket?”) while gazing, (3) pick up the toy (4) pick up and name the toy. The confederate then asked infants for the toy by name.
Preliminary analyses show that infants exhibited no significant preference for the sensitive or the redirective rooms, t(29)=.56, p=.58, and therefore did not consistently demonstrate associating reward with either interaction type. However, the interaction style associated with the testing room predicted infant performance on the social cue task. Infants tested in the redirective room were more likely than those tested in the sensitive room to select the target object when prompted, t(28) = -2.35, p =.026 (Figure 2). The findings suggest that conditioned associations with redirectiveness increase cue following in infants more than exposure to sensitivity. Conditioned associations impact infant attention and behavior, and redirectiveness may prime infants to switch attention according to the actions of a social partner. Recent research shows that maternal redirectiveness predicts infant attentional switching (Mason, Schwade, Goldstein, 2018). We will discuss how social interactions shape infant attention and behavior through the experience of reward and conditioning.

Authors

• Melissa Elston, Cornell University
  Presenting Author

• Jennifer Schwade, Cornell University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Michael Goldstein, Cornell University
  Non-Presenting Author