Beyond the Parent-Infant Dyad: How Infants Shape Educators’ Behaviors

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Infant behaviors such as vocalizations, gaze, gestures, and object manipulations organize caregiver attention and elicit responding. Caregiver sensitivity to these behaviors have immediate and long-term influences on a range of domains including language, attachment, and social competency. Yet, most of the research examining infants’ contributions to caregiver-infant interactions are studied in the context of parent-infant dyads. This symposium brings together three research programs investigating how infant behaviors organize educator responding in infant-toddler group care settings. Paper 1 demonstrates that infant vocalizations produced during one-on-one interactions elicit simplified and more learnable linguistic information from educators compared to educator speech at other times. Paper 2 shows that educators’ responsive and encouraging behaviors during diapering routines relate to children’s involvement and well-being during caregiver-child interactions in the diaper change routine. Paper 3 takes a dynamic systems approach to demonstrate patterns related to how infants and educators coordinate their attention across the course of naturally occurring joint attention sequences in infant classrooms . Together, this collection of papers highlights how infants take an active role in their own socialization and development in infant-toddler classrooms. Our discussant will place our findings in a theoretical child-effects perspective, and use a competency framework for early childhood educators to consider professional development implications of these findings for educators working with groups of infants. By considering the relative influences of infant cues on eliciting caregiver behaviors, this symposium will increase our understanding of how caregiver-infant interactions organize opportunities for learning in early childhood education settings beyond the parent-infant dyad.

Sub Unit

• School Readiness/Childcare

Chair

• Rachel R Albert, Lebanon Valley College

Discussant

• Claire D Vallotton, Michigan State University

Individual Presentations

• Infant babbling simplifies educator language in infant-toddler classrooms. - Presenting Author: Rachel R Albert, Lebanon Valley College; Claire D Vallotton, Michigan State University

• Caregiver–infant and toddler interactions during diapering: Caregiver responsiveness and child well-being and involvement - Presenting Author: Deborah E. Laurin, West Coast Institute; Shannon Guss, University of Oklahoma - Tulsa; Diane M. Horm, University of Oklahoma-Tulsa

• The ins and outs of joint attention: A dynamic systems analysis of sequences of joint attention sequences in an infant early childhood setting. - Presenting Author: Sheila Degotardi, Macquarie University; Sarah Jacobson, Macquarie University