Poster #3 - Attention to Social Events, Social Competence, and Vocabulary Size at 18 Months

• In Event: 2-163 - Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Section - Attention, Learning, Memory

Integrative Statement

Social events (e.g., audiovisual speech) provide infants with an extraordinary amount of redundant multimodal information across face, voice, and gesture. Efficient attention (e.g., appropriate shifting and maintaining attention) to social information provides a foundation for typical social and language development (Bahrick & Todd, 2012). Enhanced attention to audiovisual social events (relative to nonsocial events) emerges gradually across infancy (Bahrick et al., 2016). This likely parallels the infant’s increasing experience interacting with the social world and along with it, gains in social competence and language. Social competence is also related to vocabulary outcomes in 2-3-year-olds (Vaughn van Hecke et al., 2007).
We developed the Multisensory Attention Assessment Protocol (MAAP; Bahrick et al., in press) to characterize individual differences in attention to audiovisual social events in infants and children. Prior research demonstrates that attention to social events on the MAAP is related to expressive and receptive vocabulary size in 2-5-year-olds (Bahrick et al., in press). Here, we expand on this finding, and assess links among attention to social events, social competence, and vocabulary size in younger children.
Eighteen-month-old infants (N=33) participated in the MAAP. On each of 12 trials, following a 3-s dynamic central visual event, infants view the faces of two women speaking along with the natural soundtrack synchronized with one of them (see Figure 1). For half the trials, the central stimulus remains on throughout the lateral events providing an additional source of distracting information and for the other half, it disappears at the onset of the lateral events. Attention to social events was calculated as the proportion of available looking time (PALT) infants spent fixating the women’s faces and reflects sustained attention to social events in the face of distracting stimulation. Parents completed the Infant-Toddler Social Emotional Assessment (Carter & Briggs-Gowan, 2006) to assess social competence, and the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (Fenson et al., 2007) to assess the expressive vocabulary size.
Results indicated that social competence was correlated with both attention (r=.361, p=.039) and expressive vocabulary (r=.492, p=.004). PALT was not related to expressive vocabulary (p=.48). Given these patterns of correlations, we analyzed a mediation model in which social competence mediated the relation between attention to social events and vocabulary size (Figure 2). Results revealed that social competence significantly mediated the relationship between PALT and expressive vocabulary, b=93.21, 95% CI:4.15-178.92, with no significant direct effect of attention to social events on expressive vocabulary (p=.73). 75% of the total effect of attention to social events on expressive vocabulary was mediated by social competence.
The present study reveals the mediational role of social competence in the relation between attention to social events and language outcomes at 18-months. Infants who attend more to audiovisual social events in the presence of distractions show greater social competence, and, in turn, larger expressive vocabularies. Future research will examine if infant attention to social events can be trained and explore the downstream effects of this training on later social and language skills.

Authors

• Elizabeth V Edgar, Florida International University
  Presenting Author

• Myriah E McNew, Florida International University
  Non-Presenting Author

• James Torrence Todd, Florida International University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lorraine E Bahrick, Florida International University
  Non-Presenting Author