Poster #143 - Adult-infant mutual gaze avoidance is not generalizable in Africa: illustrations from rural Senegal

• In Event: 2-002 - Special Poster Session 05 with Continental Breakfast Reception
  In Poster Session: PS 05 - International Section

Integrative Statement

In Western societies, studies have shown that mother-child mutual gaze has benefits for children and their relationships with caregivers. Eye gaze helps mothers interpret their children’s intention (Golinkoff, 1986; Gros-Louis, West & King, 2014), which is crucial when responding to children’s needs. Mutual gaze is a means of sharing positive affect (Feldman, 2007), and is not only a sign of responsiveness to a child, but also serves as a regulator of children’s emotions in situations of distress (MacLean et al., 2014). Mutual gaze is considered to be the most solid way of creating a communicative connection between humans. It is a particularly useful tool when examining joint attention, which plays an important role in the process of learning and memory from the early days of life through adulthood (Kim & Mundy, 2012).

Although the importance of mutual gaze is strongly documented in the Western literature, observational studies conducted in Africa suggest that in some subcultures, mothers avoid eye contact with their babies. Such avoidance may be for cultural reasons or for fear of mystical dangers for the child (Zeitlin, 2011). The objective of this paper is to investigate how Wolof mothers in rural Senegal interact with their children through mutual gaze by describing the frequency, nature, and duration of mutual gaze during face-to-face interactions.

60 Wolof-speaking caregiver-child pairs from 17 villages participated in the study. Children’s age was between 20 and 30 months (M = 24.32, SD = 2.8). Mutual gaze data were obtained from 5-min video-recorded interactions, and coded later. ELAN software was used to capture the frequency and duration of mutual gaze. Coders also captured gaze initiation, the emotional context (neutral, negative or positive) during periods of mutual gaze, as well as caregivers’ responsiveness to infants’ attempts to have eye contact. Each pair had a total score for emotions: neutral (range = 0-13), negative (range = 0-6), positive (range = 0-53).

Differently from previous findings in Africa, the results showed that Senegalese rural mothers have frequent and sustained eye contact with their babies (Frequency: 13.55 SD = 11.83, M = 13.55, Median = 10.5; Average duration: 25.65 seconds, M = 25.65, SD = 29.65, Median = 16.11); instances of mutual gaze may even be more prevalent than those observed for Western mothers reported in other research. The emotional context of mutual gaze was predominantly positive with a mean score of 11.03, SD = 11. 282 as compared to negative and neutral emotions with scores of 0.6 (SD =1.39) and 2.07 (SD =3.23) respectively. Instances of random eye contact were very rare (0.66 times on average, SD = 1.169); mothers initiated mutual gaze (M = 8.87, SD = 7.637) more than children (M = 3.80, SD = 4.282). Mothers returned children’s gaze 34.47% of the time when children sought eye contact.

These findings open avenues for future research on mother-child relationships in Africa while calling on the cautiousness of not generalizing the idea that certain nurturing parenting practices due to social norms, are avoided in Africa as a whole.

Authors

• Yatma Diop, Michigan State University
  Presenting Author

• Lori Skibbe, Michigan State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ann Weber, Stanford University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Anne Fernald, Stanford University
  Non-Presenting Author