Behavioral and Physiological Implications of Parental Mobile Use (PMU) – An experimental study

• In Event: Intersection between technology and parenting: The COVID-19 pandemic and beyond

Abstract

Parental mobile device use while parenting (PMU) has become embedded in children’s daily experiences, raising concerns about the potential impacts of this phenomenon on children (McDaniel, 2019). A growing body of research suggests that PMU is associated with parents’ reduced verbal and nonverbal communication with children, slow responses to children’s engagement attempts, and less sensitive eventual responses (Radesky et al., 2014; Vanden Abeele et al., 2020; Wolfers et al., 2020). Among children, PMU has been associated with elevated negative affect and behavior problems (Myruski et al., 2018; Stockdale et al., 2020). However, little is known about the effects of PMU during infancy, a period in which interactions with caregivers dominate children’s social environment. The nature of parent-child interactions shapes the development of neural systems underlying attentional and social communication systems (Cicchetti & Dawson, 2002). Thus, it is imperative to better understand the effects PMU can have on the behavioral and physiological dimensions of parent-child social experiences.
In the current study, we sought to experimentally examine whether maternal mobile phone use while interacting with the child has an immediate effect on the frequency of mothers’ and infants’ joint attention (JA) behaviors, the likelihood that these behaviors will lead to JA episodes, and the duration of established JA episodes. Additionally, we were interested to examine the effect of PMU on infants’ behavioral and physiological stress markers (i.e., heart rate and negative affect).
Participants were 106 mother-infant (M age = 11.88 months; 51% male) dyads that were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions. All conditions started and ended with a 3-min mother-child free-play and the manipulation occurred in between them: (1) Mobile-phone-disruptions: an experimenter sent mothers text messages and mothers were instructed to reply; (2) Social-disruptions: an experimenter entered the room and posed the same questions verbally; (3) Undisrupted-play: mother-child free-play. Mother–infant interactions were coded for frequency of JA behaviors and duration of JA episodes. Infants’ heart rate (HR) was recorded and observed negative affect (NA) was rated offline.
In dyads assigned to the mobile phone disruptions condition, infants produced more JA initiations, mothers were less likely to contingently respond to infant initiations, JA behaviors were less likely to result in established JA, and JA episodes were shorter compared to dyads in the two control conditions and the baseline free play phase (Figure 1). In this condition, infants also exhibited the highest increase in HR and NA between the free-play and the mobile-phone disruptions phase (Figure 2). They also showed the sharpest decrease in HR between the mobile-phone disruptions and subsequent free-play phases. Finally, infants assigned to the mobile-phone-disruptions group showed the tightest coupling between physiological and behavioral reactivity, as evident in strong positive associations between HR and NA change scores.
Findings suggest that maternal mobile phone use during face-to-face interactions with the infant can disrupt the process of establishing JA in ongoing mother–child interactions and elicit physiological and behavioral reactivity among infants, suggesting that this may be a stressful context.

Authors

• Yael Rozenblatt-Perkal, Ben Gurion University of the Negev
  Presenting Author

• Michael Davidovitch

• Dafna Krapf-Bar

• Noa Gueron-Sela, Ben Gurion University of the Negev