Poster #60 - Parent-Infant Engagement and Parental Verbal Responsiveness During Object Play: Implications for Early Language Development

• In Event: Poster Session 18

Abstract

The primary aim of this research study was to explore the interaction between parent-infant engagement characteristics and parental responsiveness during object-mediated play, and the potential implications of these relations for early infant vocabulary development. Specifically, we focused on whether and how infant coordination and parental joint action during play may moderate the relationship between parental verbal responsiveness and infant vocabulary growth. To examine this relationship, we conducted a short-term longitudinal study with parent-infant dyads when infants were 13 months and 18 months. At both sessions, dyads completed a free-play session with a standardized set of objects and parents reported infant expressive vocabulary using the MacArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI; Fenson et al., 2007). We were specifically interested in coordination, joint action and parental verbal responsiveness that occurred within periods of infant object engagement (i.e., time spans in which infants were engaged with an object). Coordination was defined as instances within engagement periods during which the infant actively and repeatedly coordinated attention between the parent and the object of focus (e.g., infant alternated gaze between parent and object). Joint action was defined as instances in which the parent and infant were actively, manually involved with the same object/set of objects. Parental verbal responsiveness was defined as parents’ verbal responses within an engagement period that were related to the child’s object of focus. A series of regression analyses revealed that infant coordination and parental joint action at 13 months each uniquely moderated the relationship between parental responsiveness at 13 months and vocabulary growth from 13 to 18 months. Specifically, higher responsiveness was associated with higher vocabulary growth but only for infants with higher levels of coordination whereas higher responsiveness was associated with higher vocabulary growth but only for infants with low parental joint action. Our analysis of concurrent behavior at 18 months and vocabulary growth showed that infant coordination, parental joint action, and parental responsiveness each uniquely predicted vocabulary growth. Specifically, higher infant coordination and parental responsiveness was associated with higher vocabulary growth whereas higher parental joint action was negatively associated. The results from this study highlight the unique and combined roles of infant coordination and parental responsiveness in shaping language development while also raising questions about the influence of parental joint action.

Authors

• Mayra Chantal Ramirez
  Presenting Author

• Catharine H. Echols, University of Texas at Austin