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The Role of Maternal Intrusiveness and Sensitivity on the Temporal Characteristics of Early Social Interaction

Thu, April 8, 12:55 to 1:55pm EDT (12:55 to 1:55pm EDT), Virtual

Abstract

A parent with high levels of intrusiveness is one that interferes during a child’s activities with interruptions or shifts in play that fit the parent’s preferences. In mother-child turn-taking, high maternal intrusiveness and low maternal sensitivity may manifest as poor flexibility and frequent interruptions due to low sensitivity towards the child’s attentional shifts and preferences (Ainsworth et al., 1978; Campbell et al., 2007). Instead of repairing interrupted interactions, intrusive mothers tend to corral rather than adapt to the play of their children (Fantasia et al., 2019; Jameson et al., 1997). The effect of less directed input as well as poor social predictability may inhibit the infant’s cognitive growth, including later ability to learn novel words (Brooker & Poulin-Dubois, 2013; Kaplan et al., 2001). Yet, maternal intrusiveness and sensitivity and its role in the temporal characteristics of social interaction has received limited attention.
In this study, we examine the temporal characteristics of dialogue extracted from video recordings of semi-structured play between mothers and children enrolled in the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Program (EHSREP). The temporal measures will be analyzed as a function of age (i.e. 14, 24, 36 months) and parenting behaviors (i.e. maternal sensitivity, maternal intrusiveness). Our goal is understanding how maternal behaviors impact bidirectional processes in mother-child communicative interactions. Our lab’s turn-taking research has found that conversational timing between mothers and their children becomes quicker as the child approaches school age (Smith & McMurray, 2018). Previous research on EHSREP recordings found maternal intrusiveness predicted increases in child negativity at later ages as well as decreased child engagement and dyadic mutuality in some families (Ispa et al., 2004). Our study will build upon the EHSREP research and connect them to our work on temporal characteristics observed in early social interactions.
The planned analyses focus on temporal outcomes across three ages with maternal sensitivity and intrusiveness as possible predictors. Maternal and child temporal outcomes include talk time, number of interruptions, and response latencies. Coding of maternal and child utterances is being completed in Praat with balanced coding at each age expected by the end of November 2020. Statistical analyses will be completed no later than January 2021. Preliminary analyses on available data indicated that intrusive mothers had a tendency to talk for a larger proportion of the total talk time (r=.19), especially at 24 months, and had a higher number of utterances per minute (r=.18) compared to non-intrusive mothers. We predict greater intrusiveness will be associated with a larger number of interruptions and longer periods of maternal talk time as well as less child talk time. Greater maternal sensitivity may be reflected in correlations between talk time and response latencies. A mother that is more sensitive to the child’s adjustments during interaction would mirror the child’s talk time (e.g. using more silence with a quieter child) and interaction timing (e.g. quick child responses=quick maternal responses). This study will identify how parenting behaviors may influence conversational timing and supportive language environments during early childhood.

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