Why Parent-Infant Interaction Matters: Impacts of Parent’s Multimodal Inputs on Infant’s Perceptual Experiences

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Parent-child interaction cements the foundation of an infant’s social learning. Parents actively help infants perceive their surroundings and facilitate associated learning. The present symposium considers the nature of the relationship between infants’ perceptual experiences and their corresponding parental input. The goals of this symposium are (1) to explore infant’s perceptual experiences under various free-flow interactive circumstances; (2) to discuss the dynamic relationship between parent actions and infant’s multimodal experiences (e.g., visual attention, brain activities, bodily actions, etc.), and (3) to reconcile the reciprocal nature of scaffolding by reviewing the range of social coordination that was reported with different research paradigms.

In the first talk, the presenter documents a joint effect of visual saliency and parental object handling on infant object attention by observing object play using head-mounted eye trackers. The second presenter highlights the neural significance of infant-mother attention coordination and points to the importance of leader-follower attention dynamics in word learning. In the third talk, the presenter identifies caregivers’ gesture inputs and their associated changes in the infant’s posture during home activities. The fourth presenter focuses on parents’ spatial multimodal inputs in structuring infants’ attention during puzzle play.

By the end, presenters will lead the discussion together. We will bring a new perspective on social scaffolding by discussing the variability of parental scaffolding in terms of attention, linguistic input, and manual actions. Also, we will explore potential mechanisms – how parental adjustments contribute to key coordination of information exchange and further facilitate early perception and learning.

Sub Unit

• Perceptual, Sensory, Motor

Chair

• Lichao Sun, University of Houston

Individual Presentations

• Infant Attention as a Joint Function of Visual Saliency and Parental Handled Actions - Presenting Author: Lichao Sun, University of Houston; Hanako Yoshida, University of Houston

• Learning Words Actively in Context: A Quasi-Naturalistic Hyperscanning Study - Presenting Author: Louise Goupil, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Katherine Denman, University of East London; Zion Henry; Victor Serveau; Ira Marriott Haresign, University of East London; Isabelle Dautriche; Sam V Wass, University of East London

• Gesturing to Infants: Relations Between Infant Posture and Caregiver Gestures During Everyday Play - Presenting Author: Joshua L Schneider, University of Pittsburgh; Samantha Plate, University of Pittsburgh; Emily Roemer Britsch, University of Pittsburgh; Anna Donato, Boston University; Morgan Kistler, University of Pittsburgh; Juliana Agnolet, University of Pittsburgh; Jana M Iverson, Boston University

• Does Parents’ Spatial Multimodal Input Structure Infants’ Attention During Puzzle Play? - Presenting Author: Erim Kızıldere, University of California - Davis; Christian Nelson, University of California Davis; Marianella Casasola, Cornell University; Lisa M Oakes, University of California - Davis