Assessing the Impact of Mother-Infant Joint Attention on Children’s Later Language Development: A Cross-Cultural Study of Gambian and British Infants

• In Event: Parent-Infant Interactions Around the World: What Mother Behaviours Across Socio-Cultural Groups Promote Cognitive and Language Outcomes?

Abstract

Joint attention is believed to support child language development by providing the key ‘object-word’ mapping necessary for word learning. Recent research suggests that sustained attention, within the context of joint attention, relates more strongly to language development than simply the presence of joint attention. Further, this relationship seems to be mediated by parental behaviours which may either extend or hinder infant attention to objects. Although research on sustained and joint attention promises to find a key mechanism for infant word learning, most of the research has been conducted on Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) populations. Research that examines joint and sustained attention in other cultures is needed to examine the generalizability of the mechanism.
This study assesses the role of both joint and sustained attention to language development within a cohort from the rural Gambia and the UK, recruited as part of the wider BRIGHT study (Brain Imaging for Global Health). The effect of parental talk and touch on the duration of joint attention and consequent language growth is also explored. Mother-infant interaction videos, recorded when infants were 8 months, were coded for the duration of joint and sustained attention episodes as well as maternal talk and touch. The coding scheme used in this study was adapted from Smith and colleagues (Yu & Smith, 2017) and was based merely on the infant’s continuous gaze. Vocabulary growth, including word production and understanding, was assessed at 12 and 18 months by the Mac-Arthur Bates Communicative Developmental Index (CDI).
Results demonstrated that in both settings maternal joint attention (JA) extended infant’s attention to objects. Also, in both settings infants rarely looked to the parents face during object play. In contrast to our UK sample, where maternal behaviours during JA episodes extended the duration of infant attention, maternal behaviours of touch and talk were not required to sustain infant attention in rural Gambia. Indeed, JA episodes containing maternal talk were rare in the Gambia. Correlational analyses exploring the relation between joint attention episodes and later vocabulary growth will also be presented. Findings will be discussed considering the unique cultural context of rural Africa, providing key insights into the role of joint attention as a primary mechanism for learnings words.

Authors

• Maria Magdalena Crespo-Llado, University of Liverpool
  Presenting Author

• Zainab Haider, University of Cambridge
  Non-Presenting Author

• Bosiljka Milosavljevic, Birkbeck, University of London
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sam McCann, King's College London
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sophie Moore, King's College London
  Non-Presenting Author

• Clare Elwell, University College London
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sarah Lloyd-Fox, Birkbeck, University of London
  Non-Presenting Author