Interpersonal Synchrony and its Role in Language Development in 9-month-old Infants

• In Event: Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Topic - Language, Communication

Abstract

Interactions between mother and infant are characterized by regular and recurring cycles of behaviors and affective expressions. This rhythmic pattern not only allows predictability in the behaviors but also coordinates actions between mother and infant (Censullo et al., 1985). That might result in, concurrent or sequential, interpersonal synchrony (IPS), which is defined as the temporal coordination of behavioral, neural and/or physiological states (Feldman et al., 2011; Markova et al., 2019). Similarly, spoken language has a rhythmic pattern (Allen, 1975). Infants are sensitive to speech rhythm (Nazzi et al., 1998) and use this sensitivity for segmenting words in fluent speech (Jusczyk et al., 1999). In addition, infants’ rhythmic knowledge (Höhle et al., 2014) and their speech segmentation ability (Junge et al., 2012) predict later language outcomes. In spite of the remarkable connection that rhythmicity characterizes both mother-infant interactions as well as infants´ language perception, no studies have investigated whether and how IPS with caregivers contributes to infant language development.
The present study aims at examining whether and how behavioral IPS between mother and infant correlates with infant’s ability to process speech at the same age. Specifically, we ask whether concurrent mother-infant IPS is linked to word segmentation from fluent speech in 9-month-olds. We hypothesize this connection and predict that more frequent episodes of behavioral IPS in the valence of affective expressions are linked to better word segmentation at 9 months.
Ninety Austrian-German-speaking mothers and their 9-month-old infants, who are already recruited for a large-scale study, will participate. The testing is already initiated and will be completed by February 2021 (if pandemic allows the lab to stay open). In order to measure the behavioral IPS, a 150-seconds free play session is video-recorded and coded offline for emotional valence (Feldman et al., 2011) using EUDICO Linguistic Annotator (ELAN; Wittenburg et al., 2006). The coding happens after each test session. Infants’ speech segmentation ability is examined with a central fixation paradigm (Cooper & Aslin, 1990). Infants are familiarized with auditory Austrian-German text passages containing two target words, and then tested on isolated novel and familiar words. Whether infants segmented words from the passages will be indicated by differences in looking times between novel and familiar words.
For data analysis, to assess speech segmentation, we will run a linear mixed-effects model with looking times, collected with an Eyelink eye-tracker, as dependent variable; the fixed factors will be word type (novel vs. familiar). This baseline model will be complemented by the predictor of IPS, that is affect synchrony, defined as the proportion of time infant and mother matched their emotional valence. We predict that the difference in looking times between novel and familiar words will rise with the increase of IPS synchrony.
This study will fill a knowledge gap in early communication research by bridging the fields of social cognition and language development. Further, elucidating what infants might need in order to develop their language, it would help both parents and clinicians to design specific strategies for language delay outside of language itself.

Authors

• Monica Vanoncini, University of Potsdam
  Presenting Author

• Natalie Boll-Avetisyan, University of Potsdam
  Non-Presenting Author

• Birgit Elsner, University of Potsdam
  Non-Presenting Author

• Stefanie Hoehl, University of Vienna
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ezgi Kayhan, University of Potsdam
  Non-Presenting Author