Symposium
Chairs: Maarit Silvˇn and Hui-Chin Hsu
Discussant: Alan Fogel
Studies from the 1970's and 1980's demonstrated that communication betweeninfants and their parents becomes progressively more regulated. By the endof the first year, both partners are more sensitive to each other'sattentional focus and emotional expressions. Before 4 months of age,infants show intense interests in face-to-face interaction. Around four orfive months of age, a transition from the social world to the world ofobjects seems to take place. In the following months, joint activities withthe caregiver during object-oriented exchanges become increasinglysymmetrical and reciprocal. It has been proposed by Fogel and Lyra (1997)that new frames of triadic interaction emerge from earlier evolved framesof dyadic interaction. Their view highlights the significance ofdevelopmental processes of mother-infant communication. Other researchsuggest that the temporal organization and dynamics of early parent-infantcommunication are predictive of later development. The aim of this symposium is twofold: to focus on both concurrent andpredictive validity of early parent-infant communication. The symposiumbrings together researchers from four different countries to report resultsfrom their longitudinal studies on the relations between patterns of earlyparent-infant communication and social-emotional, cognitive, and languagedevelopment. Each of the studies focuses specifically on research methodsthat examine indices of communication quality that are inherently dyadic,that is, they do not focus on individual response contingency. The studyconducted in the United States presents a process view of how infantvocalization changes according to the dynamics of mother-infantcommunication concurrently as well as over time. The French study shows howcommunication observed in mother-infant dyads from 2 to 8 months of age inan object-centered free play situation is related to the infant's capacityto control contingency in a experimental task at 6, 7, and 8 months. Thethird paper uses Structural Equation Modeling to study the relationshipbetween the patterns of mother-infant communication at 3- and 6-months in aFinnish sample and the infant's language skills measured at 12 months. Thefourth study from Israel uses time-series models on the relations betweenthe synchrony of infant-mother and infant-father communication at 5 monthsand the complexity of the child's symbolic play with mother and father at32 months.
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Infant vocal production and mother-infant communication undergo dramaticchanges during the first year, particularly, the first 6 months of aninfant's life. It has been suggested that vocal production andcommunication are two interdependent developing systems. Nevertheless, thedevelopment of infant vocalization and mother-infant communication has beensubjected to empirical examinations separately in different researchtenants. In an attempt to bridge the developmental processes between thesetwo systems, this paper will present the results from a descriptive studydesigned (1) to document the developmental processes of mother-infantface-to-face communication using statistical modeling, and (2) toinvestigate the relations between infant non-distress vocalization andmother-infant communication during the first six months.Speech quality is the one of the primary characteristics of earlynon-distress vocalizations. Experimental research suggests that thecontingency and responsiveness of an adult partner enhance young infants'vocal pattern and quality (i.e., speech-likeness). During a naturalisticmother-infant interaction, the communication between mother and infant isan unfolding dynamic process of continuously coordinated and mutuallyregulated actions by both partners. While there are coherent, reciprocal,and synchronized moments, there are also mismatches in mothers' and theirinfants' interactive behaviors. There are also moments during which theinfants are completely disengaged by gazing away, mothers make unilateralbids for interaction. It was hypothesized that: (1) Patterns of the mother-infant communicationnot only show fluctuations from one moment to the next but also demonstratedevelopmental changes from one week to the next; and (2) The quality(speech-likeness) and quantity (rate per minute) of infant non-distressvocalizations are related to the dynamics of mother-infant communicationnot only concurrently (i.e., co-occurrence) but also developmentally (i.e.,over time).09Thirteen American infants and their mothers were videotaped during aface-to-face interaction weekly in a laboratory for approximately 5 minutesfrom age 4 to 24 weeks. Infant non-distress vocalizations were identifiedfrom the videotapes and classified as syllabic (speech-like , 61%) orvocalic vocalizations (39%) (Bloom, 1987). Three patterns of mother-infantcommunication were also coded separately and classified as: (a) symmetrical(mutual engagement by mother and infant, 19%), (b) asymmetrical (motheractive while infant inactive, 12%), or (c) unilateral (mother active whileinfant disengaged, 69%) (Fogel & Lyra, 1997). Results from statistical modeling demonstrated that there are non-lineardevelopmental changes in mother-infant face-to-face communication. Adynamic systems theory is suggested to explain the developmental changes.Furthermore, co-occurrence analysis showed that before 16 weeks, syllabicvocalizations were more likely to co-occur with symmetrical communication.After 16 weeks, syllabic vocalizations were more likely to co-occur withunilateral communication. Developmentally, a curvilinear growth pattern(inverted-U shape) of the rate of syllabic vocalizations was found insymmetrical communication, whereas a linear increase was found inunilateral communication. Findings from the present study demonstrated adevelopmental reorganization in the relation between infant vocalproduction and mother-infant communication during the first six months. A'between-the-dyad' approach is suggested to interpret the developmentalprocess of infant non-distress vocalization in a dynamic and changingmother-infant communication system.
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The paper will examine whether first word learning is related tomother-infant communication at 3- and 6-months in a longitudinal Finnishsample. During the last decade, research on language learning in infancyhas produced a number of remarkable discoveries suggesting that developmentof speech proceeds as interaction between genetic and socio-culturalfactors. The course of growth proceeds from learning to perceive towardsproducing speech that matches the meaningful units, words and morphemes, ofthe native language. Regardless of culture, many infants learn tocommunicate with one-word utterances around 10-15 months.Research on the social route to language learning has focused on explainingcognitive growth by taking into account the learner's intentions as well asthe social influence of other humans. According to this view, when thecaregivers respond to children's acts as a possible instance to communicatefeelings and intentions, they project meaning to the infant's visual gaze,vocalizations, facial expressions, and body movements in everydayencounters. It is our proposition that early communication drives thedevelopmental process in infancy towards explicit lexical representationsboth in terms of content and form.The present paper relates the quality of early mother-infant communicationto indices of language development. The data is a part of a longitudinalstudy of 80 infants and their parents. The goal of the study is todetermine the joint influence of early mother-infant communication (3, 6,9, and 12 months) and speech development (6 and 9 months) in languageacquisition (12, 36, and 60 months). We have videotaped mother-infant communication during face-to-face andjoint play interaction at 3 and 6 months. The five minutes mother-infantobservations were analyzed using the coding system for communicationproposed by Fogel (1997). Five different patterns of communication wereclassified: 1) Symmetrical, 2) Asymmetrical, 3) Unilateral, 4) Disruptiveand 5) Disengaged. At 12 months, the infants' first word learning wasassessed with the Early Language Test. The skill to map emerging meaningrepresentations with phonological representations of words was assessedfrom the videotaped language test using the following scoring system:Preconcepts refers to the number of infant's meaningful actions withobjects (ex.: throwing a ball, putting a doll in bed). Comprehension ofExpressions refers to the number of infant's correct reactions to prompts(ex.: Miss84 on kissa? 'Where is the cat?') concerning names of objects,indicated by looking or pointing at the named object or grasping andtouching it. Expressions refer to the number of word-like, multiphonemicutterances for objects and actions produced by the infant.The preliminary findings show that differences in Unilateral communicationduring play interaction are significantly related to differences inComprehension of Expressions at the one word stage. It is typical forunilateral communication that the focus of the mother's attention andactivities is the infant who, in turn, is engaged in watching ormanipulating toys. This pattern of communication at six months seems topredict language comprehension six months later. Structural EquationModeling will be used to specify the relations between the predictors,quality of communication at 3 and 6 months, in order to determine thesocial route to language skills.
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Micro-level processes forming the organization (structure) and dynamics(temporal rules) of mother-infant interaction have shown to predict aspectsof children's cognitive competence. Such processes afford infants thefirst opportunity to co-regulate attention, experience temporalcontingencies, form and validate expectations, and reach high positivearousal within a well-contained framework. This study examines similaritiesand differences in the organization of arousal and the temporal parametersof synchrony in infants' interaction with mother and father. Synchrony andorganization of arousal are then assessed as predictors of children'ssymbolic complexity during play with mother and father.Symbolic play, like synchrony, involves the minute-by-minute adaptationbetween the child's symbolic level and the parent's participation andguidance. Following Vygotsky, studies have shown sequential dependencebetween maternal sensitivity and the child's symbolic complexity. Similarto synchrony, relations between toddlers' symbolization and parentalsensitivity were studied mainly during mother-child interaction, withlittle attention to fathers' contribution to children's symbolic competence. One hundred Israeli parents and their five-month old firstborn child werevideotaped in infant-mother and infant-father interactions. Three minutesof parent and infant affective states were coded in second-by-second framesusing the Monadic Phase system. Synchrony was computed with CrossCorrelation Function after the auto-correlated component in eachtime-series had been partialed. The structure of infant arousal at play wasdefined according to three patterns: No Peak-infants did not reach highlevels of positive arousal during play; One Peak-infant reached highpositive arousal once; and Several Peaks-several episodes of high positivearousal appeared during play.Forty-five families were re-examined at 32 months. Infant-mother andinfant-father interactions were coded in ten-second frames for 14hierarchical levels of symbolic expression. These were aggregated intofour: no play, functional play, simple symbolic, and complex symbolic. Tenlevels addressing the parent's facilitation of infant symbolic play werecoded and combined into three: functional-manipulation,suggestion-demonstration, and extension-elaboration. The content ofchildren's symbolic play was assessed. Synchrony was as prevalent in infant-father as in infant-motherinteraction, with stronger coherence (size of CCF) between father andinfant time-series. Mutual synchrony, the cross-dependence between parentand infant affect, was more prevalent in same-gender, as compared tocross-gender dyads. One Peak of positive arousal was the typicalorganization of infant arousal during infant-mother interaction. TheSeveral Peaks pattern typified infants' interaction with father.Toddlers' play with mother and father did not differ in the level ofsymbolic complexity, but differences in thematic content emerged. Complexsymbolic play in both sessions was related to the parent'sextension-elaboration of the child's symbolic suggestions. Complex symbolicplay in toddler-father play was related to the coherence between father andinfant's time-series at 5 months and to the Several Peaksorganization ofarousal. Mother-infant mutual synchrony predicted higher symboliccompetence during mother-toddler play.Results suggest that mothers and fathers are equally competent inco-regulating infant affect as well as in supporting toddlers' symbolicexpression. Differences in the organization, dynamics, and content ofchildren's play with mother and father point to the unique contribution ofeach parent to the infant's early mental development.