Early Turn-Taking With low-SES Mothers and Fathers: Links Between Serve and Return and Children’s Language Development

• In Event: 3-142 - Children´s Language Ability: The Role of Type, Quantity, and Quality Of Parents’ Language Input.

Integrative Statement

Advances in our understanding of langue development reveal that infants are capable of understanding and producing gestures around their first year (Salo et al., 2018) and that gesture use facilitates language development (Rowe & Goldin-Meadow, 2009). Gestures and other nonverbal behaviors are important components of early parent-child turn-taking, as children might use pointing or eye gazes to respond to or engage with parents (Reed et al., 2016). However, the emerging literature on turn-taking has focused on infants’ verbal behaviors (Romeo et al., 2018). Less is known about how infants nonverbally participate in social exchanges with parents. Moreover, although there has been increased attention to the role that fathers play in language development (Malin et al., 2014), few studies have examined the turn-taking behaviors of fathers during infancy. This is an important area of research because fathers tend to provide higher quality of input (Malin et al., 2016; Rowe, et al., 2016), raising the question of whether they might also engage in more early turn-taking. Lastly, parents who are responsive to their children’s needs have children with better language skills, suggesting that responsiveness might be an important moderator (Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2003).
Research Questions. (1) What are the turn-taking behaviors (i.e., parents engage the child and the child uses verbal and nonverbal behaviors to respond) of low-SES mothers and fathers with their 9-month-olds? (2) Controlling for parents’ education and quantity of input, do parents’ turn-taking behaviors during infancy predict children’s language skills at 18 months? (3) Do maternal and paternal responsiveness moderate this association?
We use data from an ongoing parenting intervention with low-SES first-time mothers and fathers (N = 188; 94 mothers and 94 fathers). Mothers and fathers played separately with their child during a 10-minute toy play activity at 9 months. Parent responsiveness to child’s needs, moods, interests, and capabilities is micro-coded every 30 seconds and then averaged for the 10-minute interval. Number of turns between parent and child is coded on an event basis as follows: To establish a turn, parent or child must respond to their partner’s serve within 3 seconds (Gratier et al., 2015). We also measure how many times parents attempted to elicit a response from children. Children’s language skills are assessed using PLS-4.
Table 1 presents demographic characteristics of our families. Preliminary analysis on 24 parents showed that neither parental responsiveness nor education was significantly correlated with infants’ language skills at 9 months (r = .02 and -.07, respectively). Preliminary coding showed large variability in the number of turns produced by dyads (30 to 105 turns in a 10-minute toy play), In addition, parents made from 1 to 5 attempts every time they tried to the child. In future analysis, we will finish the intense coding of turns and then compare mother- and father-initiated turn-taking behaviors with their infants. We will then conduct multiple regressions to examine the effects of parent’s responsiveness and turn-taking behaviors on language skills, controlling for parental education and quantity of input.

Authors

• Yu Chen, University of Maryland
  Presenting Author

• Natasha Cabrera, University of Maryland
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jennifer Acosta, University of Maryland
  Non-Presenting Author

• Carol Barrios, University of Maryland
  Non-Presenting Author