“Push the button!”: Real-time correspondence between infant actions and caregiver verb inputs

• In Event: Dynamics of the dyad: Reciprocal relations between infant action and caregiver input

Abstract

Verbs are notoriously difficult to learn. To learn a verb, infants must attend to continuously unfolding events, extract shared meaning among them, and connect that meaning to a word. Despite this mapping problem, infants learn hundreds of verbs by age two. How do they accomplish the verb-mapping challenge? As a start, verb learning does not occur in a vacuum. Language unfolds during the back-and-forth exchanges between infants and their caregivers. We propose that reciprocal connections between infants’ actions and language inputs help infants decipher verb meanings (e.g., “step” or “climb” as an infant ascends stairs). We conducted the first naturalistic, home-based study of real-time connections between mothers’ action verbs and infants’ concurrent motor actions.

We video-recorded 32 mother-infant dyads (16 13-month-olds, 16 18-month-olds) for two hours at home. From the videos, we identified each action verb mothers used to specify a manual action (e.g., press, shake) or whole-body action (e.g., bring, go). Then, we coded whether infants displayed a manual and/or whole-body action in the 3 seconds preceding or 3 seconds following the verb utterance. We further specified whether the infants’ action corresponded precisely to the verb phrase (e.g., mother says “stack the blocks” as infant does so).

Every single mother used both manual and whole-body verbs, but they varied widely in the frequency of their verb utterances (range = 36 - 348); Figure 1. On average, mothers directed M = 94.59 (SD = 54.70) manual verbs and M = 66.53 (SD = 35.24) whole-body verbs to their infants. Mothers’ verb use increased with infant age: 18-month-olds heard far more action verbs (M = 200.19, SD = 72.56) than did 13-month-olds (M = 122.06, SD = 65.56); F(1, 31) = 10.21, p = .003.

Mothers’ verbs and infant actions were largely congruent: Whole-body verbs co-occurred with whole-body actions, and manual verbs co-occurred with manual actions (Figure 2). On average, 80.45% (SD = 11.71) of whole-body verbs co-occurred with a whole-body action. Thus, as infants engaged in whole-body play (e.g., kicking a ball), mothers offered verbs to describe or suggest whole-body actions. Likewise, 88.05% (SD = 6.43) of manual verbs co-occurred with manual actions. As infants engaged in manual play (e.g., nesting cups), mothers offered verbs to describe or suggest manual actions. Moreover, mothers’ verbs corresponded precisely to infant actions about than half the time for both whole-body (M = 52.45%, SD = 15.62) and manual verbs (M = 49.45%, SD = 9.52).

The correspondence between infant action and mother verb use suggests reciprocal, bidirectional influences between infants’ moment-to-moment behaviors and their language experiences. Infants continually interact with objects and spaces in their environment, and as they do, mothers offer words for infants’ ongoing behaviors. Thus, through their motor actions, infants participate in constructing their own language experiences.

Authors

• Kelsey L West, New York University
  Presenting Author

• Katelyn Fletcher, Temple University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Karen E Adolph, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Catherine S Tamis-Lemonda, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author