Poster #130 - Let’s Take This Offline: Infant-Grandparent Play Interactions Supported By Video Chat During Separation

• In Event: Poster Session 17

Abstract

Grandparents can play an important part in their infant grandchildren’s lives (Dunifon, 2013). Though COVID-19 interrupted in-person interactions, especially for those living far from one another, families maintained contact through video chat (Strouse et al., 2021). Previous work has shown that video chat can support children in their caregivers’ absence. When separated during a strange situation, 2-year-old children were reunited with their parents either in-person, on video chat, or via phone (Tarasuik et al., 2013). Children’s affect during in-person free play was similar to their affect when reunited over video chat. While able to support caregiver-child interactions while separated, there is much to learn about how video chat can support bonds with distant relatives in even younger children. In the present study, following metrics developed by Tarasuik and colleagues (2011) in an experimental setting, we measured how infants' contentment during video chat sessions related to their proximity and play with their grandparent while in-person given that most of their interactions occurred remotely. We also examined a potential mechanism for relationship building across contexts. Specifically, we will examine whether the overlap between the types of play during video chat and in-person interactions predicted contentment and proximity during in-person interactions.
Methods. In a naturalistic longitudinal study, 39 grandparent-parent-infant triads (infant age 9 months) recorded an in-person visit and up to three video chats between October 2020 and September 2021. The analysis plan to examine different dimensions of the interactions was pre-registered at OSF (https://osf.io/kvd97/?view_only=bea26c4c1bc2436da0314f9d98994950). Results from this dataset have been published elsewhere demonstrating that infant affective valence in both video chat and in-person sessions was predicted by grandparent sensitivity. For this new analysis, we coded playful activities and the child’s contentment in all videos. Additionally, grandparent-infant proximity was coded for in-person sessions. Overlap scores were calculated for each family using a similarity index capturing the overlap in play types occurring between in-person and virtual interactions. A previous analysis looked at in-person sessions and the video chat that preceded the visit. For participants who met in person before a video chat session, the first video chat following the in-person visit was coded. In this subset of videos, children exhibited equal levels of contentment in video chat and in-person sessions. This was true for those whose first session was on video chat (t(37) = 1.22, p = 0.228) and in person (t(37) = 0.398, p = 0.693). There was also a positive trend between the amount of overlap in types of play occurring over video chat and in person and the amount of play in person (r(37) = .30, p = .068).
Planned analysis. Including data from all sessions, we will build two linear regression models to test the hypothesis that: higher levels of contentment during virtual visits, higher frequency of videochat and higher levels of overlap in play activities between virtual and in-person sessions, will be associated with closer in-person grandparent-infant proximity and contentment.

Authors

• Douglas Piper, Georgetown University
  Presenting Author

• Lucinda Neely, Georgetown University

• Winni Zheng

• Abbey Milhaven

• Lorena Vasquez-Inzunza

• Abigail Key

• Sevillana Ettinger

• A-Nya Badger

• Lauren J. Myers, Lafayette College

• Gabrielle A. Strouse, University of South Dakota

• Jennifer M. Zosh, Penn State University, Brandywine

• Elisabeth McClure, LEGO Foundation

• Georgene Troseth, Non

• Rachel F Barr, Georgetown University