Poster group
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poster
In this longitudinal case study of two families consisting of mothers andfraternal twins, mother and toddler behaviors were studied as the toddlerslearned the skills needed for slide play. This data is part of a largerstudy of mother/child interaction and communication development during thefirst two years of life. Participants were videotaped in free play weeklyduring the first year and every other week during the second year. Atoddler slide was introduced when the infants were ten months. The slideevent is composed of three tasks. The steps are climbed while holding therail and remaining upright. Sitting on the top landing requires moving thefeet from the top step over the landing to the ramp and sitting down on thelanding while maintaining balance by holding onto the rail. Ramp descentincludes pushing off from the landing and maintaining balance while slidingdown the ramp to a final sitting or standing position at the bottom of theramp. Coding included the number of slide events per session, length ofslide events, and order of participation by twins. The first two slideevents of each session for each toddler were coded for initiator of slideevent and ramp descent, and maternal vocalizations/verbalizations. A sevenpoint rating scale was used to rate mother/toddler interaction during eachtask. A rating of one indicates the mother physically moved the toddlerthrough the task. A rating of seven indicates the toddler independentlyperformed the task. Midpoints include maternal movement of the toddlerâsbody or limbs and changes of support/balance provided for the toddler bymother. Greatest variability in mother/toddler interaction occurred duringthe task acquisition phase. The first task to be performed independently wasramp, followed by steps, with landing being the most difficult and being thelast to be independently performed. Maternal/toddler interaction differedduring each task and between each mother/toddler pair. During the initialuse of the slide, mothers eliminated the step task by lifting the toddlerand placing him/her on the landing. During early step use, mothers liftedthe toddlersâ feet from one step to the next. The landing task required themost scaffolding behaviors by the mother. Turn taking began when toddlersbecame able to initiate the step task. Prior to this time, mothers wouldlift the toddlers to the landing after ramp descent, repeating the slideevent two or more times before switching to the twin for several turns. Turntaking by independently acting toddlers was primarily controlled by theamount of time needed for a toddler to regain balance after ramp descent andwalk/run back to the steps. Mothers directed different frequencies ofencouragement and instructions to each child. Maternal off-task commentsand verbalizations directed toward the toddler not on the slide increaseddramatically when the sliding toddler acquired independence in all threetasks. Maternal scaffolding behaviors and mother/toddler interactionschanged dynamically across tasks within each session, between each toddlerpair in each session, and longitudinally throughout the fifteen months ofthe study.
poster
In both the socialization of moral norms and the transmission ofcultural skills, children learn 'the right way' to do things. Differentresearchers have traditionally studied these two types of interactions.However, some scholars have noted parallels between socializationprocesses in the moral and cognitive domains. Accordingly, in earlierwork we posited a common motivational trait that contributes to children'saction in both settings. A receptive stance, to maternal control (indiscipline contexts) and to maternal teaching (in an imitation task), bothreflect a willing disposition to be socialized. Thus, committedcompliance was expected to relate across contexts to mother-orientedmotivation. Results bore out this prediction. Two further questions arise from this research. One concernsmother-oriented motivation. This construct integrates childresponsiveness, affect, and the attentional orientation to mother. Whichof these is responsible for the coherence across contexts? The secondquestion concerns the generality of the link between child responsivenessin control contexts and in a teaching task. Is it specific to imitation?Imitation reflects a perception of mutuality that could increase thewillingness to comply. Modeling an action is also a top-down teachingprocess with one correct answer. This may have more in common withparental control than would a more open-ended task. The current study wasdesigned to examine mother-oriented motivation in a collaborative task,and to observe separately the components of this eager, receptive stanceto maternal teaching. Mother-child dyads were seen in laboratory visits at 14, 22, and33 months (N's 108, 106, and 104). Compliance variables were derivedfrom typical control contexts at all three times. Global mother-orientedmotivation had been scored in an imitation task at 14 and at 22 months.Additionally, mothers and children were observed in a new collaborativetask at 22 months and at 33 months. This required them to build somethingtogether using cardboard bricks, plastic farm animals, and other toys.Responsiveness, affect, and orientation to mother were coded separately. We first examined interrelations and external validity of thecomponents of mother-oriented motivation. Responsiveness and orientationto mother, were more strongly related than affect, both within and acrosstimes. At 22 months, responsiveness and orientation together werecorrelated with motivation in the imitation task, while affect was not.Therefore, a focus on mother and responsiveness to her suggestions are atthe core of mother-oriented motivation. Next we examined links between motivation in the collaborativetask and two compliance variables in the control context. At 22-months,mother-oriented motivation positively correlated with committed complianceand negatively related to noncompliance. This replicated the findings forimitation. At 33-months relations were in the same direction but were notsignificant. This may be due to developmental changes in compliance, or inthe expression of mother-oriented motivation. Finally, of six availablelongitudinal correlations, from compliance to mother-oriented motivationor vice versa, four were statistically significant and all were in thepredicted direction. This study adds support to the assertion that a common motivationunderlies the receptive stance in control contexts and in parent-childteaching. Results are of theoretical and practical interest, becausethese teaching interactions are vital conduits of cultural skills as wellas scaffolds for cognitive development generally. Researchers in socialand cognitive development can benefit from each other's work in trying tounderstand processes of socialization and their causes.
poster
A longitudinal study (6-18 months) examined whether parental toy play (frequency of demonstrating toys) may enhance or diminish infants' interest in independent play. This question seems particularly important for infants at risk for attention deficits. Several previous studies have suggested that vulnerability to attention deficits may be detected in infancy. If so, how might parents modify the attention deficits? Fifty-one children (25 male, 26 female) were observed in the laboratory at 6 months and at 18 months. At 6 months, infants' attentiveness was assessed by the shift-rate procedure formerly (e.g., Ruddy & Siessel, 1996) found to suggest vulnerability to later attention deficits. Seated in an infant seat, each baby was videotaped while viewing nine pairs of slides, for 35 sec per pair. Parents watched through a one-way mirror. Rate of attention shifting (slide to slide) was scored from the videotapes. Following the shift-rate assessment, parent-child play was observed, with nine toys placed, one at a time, on a table in front of the parent and child (in parent's lap). The toys were: Pop-Up Pets (animals pop up when a control is moved), cloth book, plastic activity cube, mirror, chiming push toy, push-button TV, wind-up music box, elephant with ratchet noise, and 8-in-1 playcenter. The child was to play with each toy 'until bored,' with the parent instructed to play as she/he would at home. The play session was videotaped for later scoring, to determine the number of times that the parent demonstrated the toys. At 18 months, with the parent nearby completing a questionnaire, the toddler spent 30 min exploring the toys in two small cabinets. Each cabinet had eight doors, with a toy behind each. The toys included vehicles, dolls, nesting blocks, wooden pegs in a base, bells, noise-producing tubes, a bowl and spoon, and a pop-up man. From the videotape, the duration of each of the child's play periods with each of the toys was determined; the average of the two longest play periods was used as the index of sustained attention. Infants' shift rate and parents' demonstrating at 6 months showed a striking interactive relationship with sustained attention at 18 months. Fast-shifting (i.e., inattentive) infants with parents high in demonstrating sustained their attention to toys almost twice as long at 18 months as did fast-shifting infants with parents lower in demonstrating. In contrast, for infants with slower shift rates, the opposite was found; high parental demonstrating at 6 months was associated with reduced attentiveness at 18 months. (Parents demonstrated toys an average of 76 times, SD 3D 54, with no relationship with shift rate.) Thus, if infants show early signs of attention deficits, perhaps parents, by taking active roles in toy play, can help them to develop sustained attention. On the other hand, more focused infants may benefit from parents' allowing them to explore toys for themselves.
poster
Infant mastery motivation has traditionally been considered a globalindividual characteristic, not differentiated into various types of masterymotive until the post-infancy period (Dweck and Elliot, 1983). From thispoint of view, much of the mastery motivation literature has focused almostexclusively on the child's ability to affect the inanimate environment andon object-mastery behaviors (Jennings et al., 1979;Yarrow et al., 1983).Nevertheless the emphasis on mastery of the inanimate environment is notnecessarily inherent in the original conceptualization of the masterymotivation construct (White, 1959) and more recent research has suggestedthat a broader view of the nature of mastery motivation in infancy may bewarranted. More specifically, a number of authors have suggested that, inaddition to the traditional domain of object mastery, infants may alsodisplay what might be called social mastery motivation (Morgan et al.,1990; Wachs, 1987), defined as the infant's motivation to generate,maintain and influence the course of social interactions and as thepersistence of infant attempts to obtain adult attention (Wachs and Combs,1995).The strength of this evidence is, however, limited by difficulty inmeasuring and conceptualizing the social mastery construct.This study was designed principally to test the construct validity of thesocial-object distinction within the general infant mastery motivationconstruct, verifying:a) the stability of individual differences in social and object masterymotivation;b) the lack of relations between measures of social and object masterymotivation.If social and object orientation are individual and distinct traits theyshould be stable across time and unrelated to each other.Twenty infants (10 males, 10 females) were observed longitudinally in thelaboratory at the ages of 12 (M12;4), 14 (M14;1) and 16 (M16;2) months,during single, structured play situations. Four mastery tasks werepresented one at a time for a maximum of 3 minutes, in a fixed sequence.Each session was video-recorded and the infant's play activity wasclassified according to Wachs and Combs (1995) mastery codes.Inspection of the stability correlations indicates that there is modest butsignificant stability for measures of social mastery motivation only,especially from 14 months of age. On the other hand, the index ofPersistence (the main index of object mastery motivation) is not stableacross the ages considered. Moreover, the intercorrelations of social andobject mastery measures were significant and negative in direction, showinga moderate independence of social mastery from object mastery behaviors.ReferencesDweck, C.S., Elliot, E.S (1983). Achievement motivation. In P.H. Musser(Ed.), Handbook of child psychology. Vol. 4: Socialization, personalityand social development. New York: John Wiley.Jennings, K., Harmon, R., Morgan, G., Gaiter, J., Yarrow, L. (1979).Exploratory play as an index of mastery motivation: Relationships topersistence, cognitive functioning and environmental measures.Developmental Psychology, 15, 386-394.Morgan, G.A., Harmon, R.J., Maslin-Cole, C.A. (1990). Mastery motivation:Its definition and measurement Early Education and Development, 1, 318-339.Wachs, T.D. (1987). Specificity of environmental action as manifest inenvironmental correlates of infant's mastery motivation. DevelopmentalPsychology, 6, 782-790.Wachs, T.D., Combs, T.T. (1995). The domains of infant mastery motivation.In R.H. MacTurk & G.A. Morgan (Eds.), Mastery motivation: Origins,conceptualizations, and applications. Nordwood, NJ: Ablex.White, R.W. (1959). Motivation reconsidered: The concept of competence.Psychological Review, 66, 297-333.Yarrow, L., McQuiston, S., MacTurk, R., McCarthy, M., Kelin, R., Vietze, P.(1983). Assessment of mastery motivation during the first year of life:contemporaneous and cross-age relationships. Developmental Psychology, 19,159-171.
poster
Infants demonstrate a facility with basic level object categorization at an early age. How do parents support infants' emerging understanding of object categories? This study used an adapted familiarization/novelty design to examine how parents provide infants with clues about basic object categories through labelling, other description, and play. The two primary objectives were to describe parents' verbal and behavioral responses to familiarized and novel object categories during interactions with their infants and to determine whether and how such parental responses differ based on the infant's age. Parents of infants between 6 and 16 months of age were asked to interact with their infants during a videotaped play session at the laboratory. Parents were simply instructed to play with the child with one toy at a time in a prescribed order. Each session included interactions with two different sets of toys. Each set included eight toys ordered such that trials 1 to 4 were different members of the 'familiar' category; of the remaining 4 trials, two were paired to include one trial with a toy from a novel basic level category within the same superordinate group as the familiar category and one trial that was another 'familiar' toy; and two were paired to include one trial that was a toy from a novel superordinate category and one trial that was another 'familiar' toy. For example, one series might include, in order, the following toys (each toy is different): cat, cat, cat, cat, monkey, cat, boat, cat. The videotapes were transcribed to obtain the content of the parentUs verbalizations during each toy presentation, including the number and types of labels during each presentation and verbal cues for novelty (e.g., 'here's a different one') or familiarity (e.g., 'here's another'). In addition, behavioral analysis included measures such as total duration of each toy presentation, infant's visual attention to each toy, duration of infant's manual exploration of each toy, and infant's vocalizations. As predicted, parents showed a decrease in the number of labels across trials 1 through 4, as the category became familiar. There was a significant increase, compared to the rate on trial 4, in their labelling of the novel categories on later trials. It is interesting that there was a similar and significant increase in labelling of toys in the familiar object category on later trials. Thus, parents appeared to use a contrastive strategy for labelling. The increase in labelling of the familiar toys on toys on later trials occurred even when the duration of play with those objects was decreased, relative to the novel objects. Parents also tended to introduce the objects from the novel categories as 'different', and in contrast introduced the subsequent familiar objects as 'another ___'. While color was a salient property for parents of infants of all ages, parents of older infants introduced more properties. Taxonomic information (e.g., 'a monkey is an animal') was provided most often on novel category trials.