Domain-Specific Interaction Bahvior in Early Childhood

• In Event: Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Topic - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Abstract

Large-scale studies focusing on a wide range of facets of stimulation within the home learning environment at a very young age are sparse in Germany. Home learning environment is a broad concept with many different facets: Bio-ecological models of development highlight the early impact of contextual family’s characteristics, such as education and income, as well as processes, such as the quality of parent-child-interaction (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006). Research focusing on children above the age of three years show the importance of domain-specific interaction behavior for various domains of child development (Sammons et al., 2008; Weinert & Ebert, 2017). Using data from the newborn cohort of the German National Educational Panel Study (Blossfeld & Roßbach, 2019) the study examines mother-child interaction behavior by forming different domain-specific indicators and researches the effects of these on domain-specific child development. Since large-scale studies focusing on domain-specific parent-child interaction with children under the age of three are sparse, a micro-analytic coding instrument to code semi-standardized toy-play situations of the NEPS-data was developed for capturing the dyadic parent-child interaction processes and assessing various facets of interaction behavior. Since the mother was the main caretaker in the parent-child interaction for most of the children in NEPS (98 %), only mothers speaking mainly in German with the child were included in the present analyses. The study focuses on mother-child interaction (N = 1881) when the children were between 22 and 31 months old (M = 26). We are using structural equation modelling to model four latent indicators of domain-specific mother interaction behavior: Stimulation of Proximal Development with Socio-emotional Support, Instruction, Language Offer and Sustained Shared Thinking. The Stimulation of Proximal Development refers to two different levels of development: the biological development level - which determines everything the child can do on its own - and the level that it can reach if it´s socially and emotionally guided by a more capable person (Holaday et al., 1994). Whereas Instructions describe direct interactions, which can initiate learning processes between a mother, who actively imparts knowledge and her child, whose role is mostly passive (Siraj-Blatchford, 2002). Language Offer is defined as a language teaching strategy and thus is a language modeling behavior, where the caregiver provides a variety of questions, utterances and vocabulary for the child which should be based on the child's level of development (Simon, 2015). Sustained Shared Thinking as the fourth indicator is defined as an effective pedagogic interaction, where mother and child work together to solve a problem and both equally contribute to the thinking, for example through asking questions or evaluating activities (Siraj-Blatchford, 2009). To demonstrate construct validity, we calculated correlations between the micro-analytic and macro-analytic coding indicators that based on the same video tapes as the micro-analytic coding indicators but contain more global measurements of parent-child-interaction. We find moderate correlations between micro-analytic and macro-analytic coding indicators indicating good construct validity. Additionally, we find moderate correlations between micro-analytic coding indicators and other outcome variables (e.g. PPVT) that were measured one year later demonstrating good predictive validity.

Authors

• Kira Konrad-Ristau, University of Bamberg
  Presenting Author

• Dave Möwisch, LIfBi - Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories
  Non-Presenting Author

• Manja Attig, LIfBi – Leibniz-Institut für Bildungsverläufe Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sabine Weinert, University of Bamberg, Germany
  Non-Presenting Author