Poster #43 - A Duet in Play: Toddler’s Responding Joint Attention Mediates Maternal Cognitive Sensitivity and Task Performance

• In Event: Poster Session 04

Abstract

Early learning begins at home, with mothers, often the primary caregiver, acting as their child’s first teacher in life. Maternal responsiveness and sensitivity were considered critical during mother-child interaction for promoting a child’s cognitive and socioemotional development. Hence, ways to support parents for responsive caregiving is an important step for nurturing children. The Responsive Interaction for Learning (RIFL) measure captures two key parenting elements: sensitivity and stimulation (Prime et al., 2015). RIFL is used to examine the level of responsiveness, sensitivity, and the level of cognitive stimulation imparted by the parent during a five-minute challenging cooperative game. A previous study that used this measure found higher maternal RIFL score was associated with better executive function in children a year later (Wade et al., 2018). However, as the dyadic interaction involves both parent and child, whether the child’s behavior during the RIFL measure task mediates this relationship remains unknown. Further, responding to joint attention (RJA) was used as the child’s behavioral marker. Previous studies have shown early development in the ability to respond to their counterpart’s gaze, pointing and vocalizing lay the foundation for social learning (Mundy & Newell, 2007, Vaughan et al., 2007). Thus, in this study, we aimed to examine whether maternal cognitive sensitivity as measured using RIFL was associated with children’s immediate task performance and whether children’s RJA was associated with immediate task performance, and lastly whether RJA mediates the relationship between maternal cognitive sensitivity and children’s immediate task performance. As part of the ongoing RIFL adaptation and validation in China, a hundred Chinese families were recruited in Southeast China to complete a challenging cooperative 5-minute mother-child building task. Of these, 46 mother-child pairs (Mother: Mean age = 34.49 years old, SD = 4.89 years old; Child: Mean age = 2.21 years old, SD = 0.38 years) were randomly drawn for this pilot analysis. Video data were rated by two trained RIFL observers independently. The child’s responding joint attention was rated using the RIFL building task video by two independent raters. We found maternal cognitive sensitivity was positively associated with children’s RJA, and children’s RJA was positively associated with child’s task performance. Lastly, children’s RJA mediated the association between maternal cognitive sensitivity and children’s task performance. However, maternal cognitive sensitivity was not associated with children’s immediate task performance. Our results suggested that higher maternal cognitive sensitivity might encourage children to be more responsive to their mother’s verbal and non-verbal cues during the mother-child interaction and hence, influence the likelihood of achieving better task performance. Our pilot analyses highlighted how the mother’s cognitive sensitivity level and child’s active engagement could better facilitate the reciprocate back-and-forth interaction between dyads in achieving a solidarity outcome, in this case, a challenging cooperative building task. As video data are coming through, we look forward to more interesting findings.

Authors

• Peiqi Dong, Zhejiang University
  Presenting Author

• Tian Qi Wu, Zhejiang University

• Yiheng Jiang, Zhejiang University

• Lian Wang, Zhejiang University

• Feng Wei Yu, Zhejiang University

• Qiong Zhang