Parental responsiveness to infant behaviors is a strong predictor of infants' language and cognitive outcomes. The mechanisms underlying this effect, however, are relatively unknown. We examined the effects of parent speech on infants' visual attention, manual actions, hand‐eye coordination, and dyadic joint attention during parent‐infant free play. We report on two studies that used head‐mounted eye trackers in increasingly naturalistic laboratory environments. In Study 1, 12‐to‐24‐month‐old infants and their parents played on the floor of a seminaturalistic environment with 24 toys. In Study 2, a different sample of dyads played in a home‐like laboratory with 10 toys and no restrictions on their movement. In both studies, we present evidence that responsive parent speech extends the duration of infants' multimodal attention. This social “boost” of parent speech impacts multiple behaviors that have been linked to later outcomes—visual attention, manual actions, hand‐eye coordination, and joint attention. Further, the amount that parents talked during the interaction was negatively related to the effects of parent speech on infant attention. Together, these results provide evidence of a trade‐off between quantity of speech and its effects, suggesting multiple pathways through which parents impact infants' multimodal attention to shape the moment‐by‐moment dynamics of an interaction.
Much of infant development occurs in the home and in the context of caregiving support. Babies learn through their everyday interactions with parents—from watching, listening, communicating, cuddling, and playing with them. Foundations for cognitive skills such as attention, perception, learning, and language are all built in the brain during the first year of life. Socioemotional development, including the ability to self-regulate behaviors and emotions, also begins during infancy. Recent advances have allowed researchers to answer questions about the developing brain and how it is impacted by experience and environmental systems, including parental sensitivity and consistency, the home environment, socio-cultural factors, community support systems, and public policies. Giving parents the opportunity to support healthy infant development through paid parental leave programs that are accessible, flexible, and equitable, will positively impact early trajectories of brain and behavioral development.
more » « less- Award ID(s):
- 1728133
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10364348
- Publisher / Repository:
- SAGE Publications
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences
- Volume:
- 9
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2372-7322
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 129-136
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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