Poster #201 - Don't talk to strangers, or should you? Shy children's vocalizations with parents and strangers

• In Event: 3-159 - Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Section - Social, Emotional, Personality

Integrative Statement

Shy children experience fear and anxiety in social settings. This fear often leads to being quiet, not speaking, and difficulty talking, despite desiring to interact (Coplan & Evans, 2009). Shy children's lack of verbal behavior is important because it may disrupt the development of communication skills (Coplan & Weeks, 2009). The present study considered shy children's verbal behaviors in relation to aspects of the social context, including social familiarity and parents' utterances, with the goal of identifying contexts that may support or hinder communication skills. We focused on toddlerhood, a period when expressive vocabulary is developing rapidly. Data coding is ongoing. Preliminary data are available for 43 toddlers (18 boys; Mage = 23.31 months, SD = .72, range 22-24 months) and parents (mostly mothers) out of a total of 54 dyads who completed a laboratory visit. All toddlers were pre-selected as temperamentally shy (>1 SD on the social fear subscale of a temperament inventory; Goldsmith, 1996). Child positive and neutral vocalizations and parent utterances were coded using event sampling as toddlers were introduced to a series of novel social stimuli. Stimuli included a male stranger, a female stranger pretending to be working, a clown, and animal puppets (Buss, 2011). For the male stranger, female stranger, and clown episodes, scores were segmented into two epochs: 20s before and after the stimulus entered and the parent and toddler were alone (familiar social context), and the 2-4 min period when the stimulus was in the room (unfamiliar social context). Scores were proportionalized by epoch duration. For the puppet episode, puppets were already in the room or entered shortly after the child, so vocalizations were only coded while the puppets were with the child (i.e., the unfamiliar social context). Parent verbal behaviors were manipulated in an experimental design. Parents were asked to provide prompts to engage (e.g., "He said his name was Eric. Tell him your name"; n=12), warm reassurance (e.g, "You'll be okay;" "What would you like to do?"; n=11), prompts plus warmth (n=10), or no encouragement (i.e., remain uninvolved; n=10). Parents asked to provide prompts or warm reassurance provided more utterances than parents asked to remain uninvolved in each social context, Fs > 6.45, ps < .001, see Figure 1. A series of mixed-design ANOVAs, conducted separately by episode, showed that shy toddlers vocalized more in familiar versus unfamiliar social contexts, Fs > 6.65, ps < .02, see Figure 2; however, utterances did not vary depending on parent condition, Fs < 2.00, ps > .10. Correlation analyses, conducted separately for each parent encouragement condition, indicated that toddler vocalizations covaried with parent utterances only during stranger approach: parent utterances were modestly and negatively associated with toddler vocalizations when parents were asked to provide prompts (r = -.57) or warm reassurance (r = - .56), ps = .07. Findings suggest shy toddlers tended to talk less in unfamiliar social contexts than in familiar ones, and particularly when parents provided more verbal input. Possible implications for shy toddlers' social and language development will be discussed.

Authors

• Caitlin Reynolds, University of the Pacific
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jessica Grady, University of the Pacific
  Presenting Author