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

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Approximately over 200 million children under the age of five in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) fail to reach expected levels of cognitive outcomes due to environmental risks. Inadequate stimulation, in particular, is a key modifiable risk factor in LMICs. Consequently, there is growing interest in parenting interventions based on empirical evidence revealing positive effects of responsive, contingent maternal behaviours (e.g., joint attention) on children’s cognitive and linguistic development. Yet, virtually all (91%) the evidence informing parenting interventions comes from western, educated populations. How do mothers from other sociocultural groups engage with their infants and what is the role of responsive mother behaviours for cognitive, language outcomes? This international symposium presents three projects aiming to inform interventions for LMICs by identifying mother behaviours across socio-cultural groups promoting key outcomes including infant sustained attention, infant visual working memory, and language input.

Paper 1 examined parent-infant interactions in rural Gambia and United Kingdom, confirming that mothers’ looks toward the infant-attended object during play (i.e., joint attention) extended infant attention across samples- though other mother behaviours did not extend attention uniformly. Paper 2 combined head-mounted eye-tracking and experimental paradigms, measuring mother-infant visual working memory in India; findings show that across socioeconomic groups, infants’ visual working memory was related to mothers’ task performance and individual differences during play. Paper 3 analysed home recordings of European-American and first-generation Latina mothers in the United States, revealing that the quantity and quality of language input for infants related to differences in interpersonal proximity between mother-infant across groups.

Sub Unit

• Race, Ethnicity, Culture, Context

Chair

• Prerna Aneja, University of East Anglia

Discussant

• Catherine S Tamis-Lemonda, New York University

Individual Presentations

• Assessing the Impact of Mother-Infant Joint Attention on Children’s Later Language Development: A Cross-Cultural Study of Gambian and British Infants - Presenting Author: Maria Magdalena Crespo-Llado, University of Liverpool; Non-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

• Bridging the Lab and Lounge to Understand the Early Development of Visual Working Memory in Rural India - Presenting Author: Prerna Aneja, University of East Anglia; Non-Presenting Author: Thomas Carr, University of East Anglia; Non-Presenting Author: Samuel H Forbes, Durham University; Non-Presenting Author: Saber Sami, University of East Anglia; Non-Presenting Author: John P Spencer, University of East Anglia

• Latina and European-American Mothers’ Language Input Differs as a Function of Mother-Infant Proximity in the Home Environment - Presenting Author: Catalina Suarez-Rivera, New York University; Non-Presenting Author: Catherine S Tamis-Lemonda, New York University