Parents Influence the Visual Learning Environment Through Children's Manual Actions

Caregiver encouragement to act on objects is related with crawling infants' receptive language

The progression from crawling to walking in infancy is associated with changes in infant language development. One possible explanation for such change is the infant's language environment. Prior research indicates that caregivers use more action directives with walking infants compared to crawling infants, but the relations of such parental speech with infant vocabulary is unknown. Here, we present findings from day-long home audio recordings (Study 1) and laboratory observations (Study 2) of same-aged crawling and walking infants to explore how caregiver language, specifically action directives, were associated with parent reported infant vocabulary size. Findings in both studies indicated that caregiver action directives were associated with crawling, but not walking infants' receptive vocabulary sizes. Specifically, action directives about objects occurring when the infant and caregiver were not jointly engaged were associated with higher receptive vocabulary scores for crawling infants, but no such pattern was found for walking infants. The replication of results in distinct samples with different research methodologies strengthens the findings. Taken together, these studies demonstrate that caregiver social engagement specific to infant motoric development is related with infant language learning.

Annual Research Review: 'There, the dance is - at the still point of the turning world' - dynamic systems perspectives on coregulation and dysregulation during early development

During development we transition from coregulation (where regulatory processes are shared between child and caregiver) to self-regulation. Most early coregulatory interactions aim to manage fluctuations in the infant's arousal and alertness; but over time, coregulatory processes become progressively elaborated to encompass other functions such as sociocommunicative development, attention and executive control. The fundamental aim of coregulation is to help maintain an optimal 'critical state' between hypo- and hyperactivity. Here, we present a dynamic framework for understanding child-caregiver coregulatory interactions in the context of psychopathology. Early coregulatory processes involve both passive entrainment, through which a child's state entrains to the caregiver's, and active contingent responsiveness, through which the caregiver changes their behaviour in response to behaviours from the child. Similar principles, of interactive but asymmetric contingency, drive joint attention and the maintenance of epistemic states as well as arousal/alertness, emotion regulation and sociocommunicative development. We describe three ways in which active child-caregiver regulation can develop atypically, in conditions such as Autism, ADHD, anxiety and depression. The most well-known of these is insufficient contingent responsiveness, leading to reduced synchrony, which has been shown across a range of modalities in different disorders, and which is the target of most current interventions. We also present evidence that excessive contingent responsiveness and excessive synchrony can develop in some circumstances. And we show that positive feedback interactions can develop, which are contingent but mutually amplificatory child-caregiver interactions that drive the child further from their critical state. We discuss implications of these findings for future intervention research, and directions for future work.

How does sensitivity influence early executive function? A critical review on hot and cool processes

There is compelling evidence that the quality of caregiver-child interactions during toddlerhood and the preschool years supports the development of executive function (EF) (Bernier et al., 2010; 2015; 2016; Fay-Stammbach et al., 2014; Geeraerts et al., 2021). Based on such findings, we make the case herein that sensitivity may be one of the most important dimensions of parenting contributing to early EF. In the present article, we will review empirical evidence, integrating findings from a wide range of scientific disciplines - cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and developmental psychopathology - and present theoretical ideas about how two contexts of sensitive caregiving - i.e. sensitivity to distress and non-distress cues - may be contributing differently to hot and cool EF development. Implications for future investigations on the environmental contributors of early EF, and its mechanisms, are discussed.

Opportunities for learning and social interaction in infant sitting: Effects of sitting support, sitting skill, and gross motor delay

The development of independent sitting changes everyday opportunities for learning and has cascading effects on cognitive and language development. Prior to independent sitting, infants experience the sitting position with physical support from caregivers. Why does supported sitting not provide the same input for learning that is experienced in independent sitting? This question is especially relevant for infants with gross motor delay, who require support in sitting for many months after typically developing infants sit independently. We observed infants with typical development (n = 34, ages 4-7 months) and infants with gross motor delay (n = 128, ages 7-16 months) in early stages of sitting development, and their caregivers, in a dyadic play observation. We predicted that infants who required caregiver support for sitting would spend more time facing away from the caregiver and less time contacting objects than infants who could sit independently. We also predicted that caregivers of supported sitters would spend less time contacting objects because their hands would be full supporting their infants. Our first two hypotheses were confirmed; however, caregivers spent surprisingly little time using both hands to provide support, and caregivers of supported sitters spent more time contacting objects than caregivers of independent sitters. Similar patterns were seen in the group of typically developing infants and the infants with motor delay. Our findings suggest that independent sitting and supported sitting provide qualitatively distinct experiences with different implications for social interaction and learning opportunities. HIGHLIGHTS: During seated free play, supported sitters spent more time facing away from their caregivers and less time handling objects than independent sitters. Caregivers who spent more time supporting infants with both hands spent less time handling objects; however, caregivers mostly supported infants with one or no hands. A continuous measure of sitting skill did not uniquely contribute to these behaviors beyond the effect of binary sitting support (supported vs. independent sitter). The pattern of results was similar for typically developing infants and infants with gross motor delay, despite differences in age.

Child-oriented word associations improve models of early word learning

How words are associated within the linguistic environment conveys semantic content; however, different contexts induce different linguistic patterns. For instance, it is well known that adults speak differently to children than to other adults. We present results from a new word association study in which adult participants were instructed to produce either unconstrained or child-oriented responses to each cue, where cues included 672 nouns, verbs, adjectives, and other word forms from the McArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI; Fenson et al., 2006). Child-oriented responses consisted of higher frequency words with fewer letters, earlier ages of acquisition, and higher contextual diversity. Furthermore, the correlations among the responses generated for each pair of cues differed between unconstrained (adult-oriented) and child-oriented responses, suggesting that child-oriented associations imply different semantic structure. A comparison of growth models guided by a semantic network structure revealed that child-oriented associations are more predictive of early lexical growth. Additionally, relative to a growth model based on a corpus of naturalistic child-directed speech, the child-oriented associations explain added unique variance to lexical growth. Thus, these new child-oriented word association norms provide novel insight into the semantic context of young children and early lexical development.

Developing language in a developing body, revisited: The cascading effects of motor development on the acquisition of language

In the first years of life, infants rapidly acquire a series of new motor skills. They learn to sit independently, to walk with skill, and to engage in a wide variety of interactions with objects. Over these same years, infants also begin to develop language. These are not isolated events. In a complex developing system, even small changes in one domain can have far-reaching effects on development in other domains. This is the fundamental idea behind the rich framework known as the developmental cascades perspective. Here we employ this framework to show how early motor advances can exert downstream effects on the development of language. Focusing first on the emergence of independent sitting, then on the development of walking, and finally on changes in the ways in which infants act on and combine actions on objects, we describe how the nature and quality of infant actions change dramatically over the first few years and how this brings with it new possibilities for engaging the environment, more sophisticated ways of interacting with people, and significant alterations in communications directed by caregivers to the infant and coordinated with infant action in time and in meaning. The developmental cascades framework provides an approach for understanding how advances in motor skills influence communicative and language development, and more generally, for conceptualizing the constant, dynamic, and complex interplay between developing infants and their environments as it unfolds over time. This article is categorized under: Linguistics > Language Acquisition Psychology > Motor Skill and Performance Psychology > Development and Aging.

The real-time effects of parent speech on infants' multimodal attention and dyadic coordination

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.

Coordination of Caregiver Naming and Children’s Exploration of Solid Objects and Nonsolid Substances

When a caregiver names objects dominating a child’s view, the association between object and name is unambiguous and children are more likely to learn the object’s name. Children also learn to name things other than solid objects, including nonsolid substances like applesauce. However, it is unknown how caregivers structure linguistic and exploratory experiences with nonsolids to support learning. In this exploratory study of caregivers and children (n = 14, 8 girls; M = 20.50 months) we compare caregiver-child free-play with novel solid objects and novel nonsolid substances to identify the linguistic and exploratory experiences associated with children’s word learning. We found systematic differences in interactions with novel objects, such that children performed more manual actions on solids than nonsolids and caregivers named solids more than nonsolids. Additionally, there was less synchrony between caregivers’ naming and children’s manual and visual exploration of nonsolids than solids. Consistent with prior work, we found that synchronous naming was associated with accurate recognition of solid object names. However, naming synchrony was not associated with recognition of nonsolid substance names or with generalization. Together these findings, though exploratory, suggest the coordination of caregiver-child play can shape what children remember about novel word-object associations for solid objects, but not nonsolid substances.

Sustained attention across toddlerhood: The roles of language and sleep

The present study examined individual differences in the development of sustained attention across toddlerhood, as well as how these individual differences related to the development of language and sleep. Toddlers (N = 314; 54% male) were assessed at 30, 36, and 42 months using multiple measures of attention, a standardized language assessment, and actigraphic measures of sleep. Toddlers were 80% White. Family socioeconomic status (SES) was calculated using the Hollingshead Four Factor Index and ranged from 13 to 66 (M = 47.59, SD = 14.13). Aims were (a) to examine associations between measures of attention across situations, informants, and time; (b) to consider the independent and interactive effects of language and sleep on attention; and (c) to test potential bidirectional associations between sleep and attention. Findings showed attention measures were stable across time but were only weakly linked with each other at 42 months. Attention was consistently linked with language. More variable sleep and longer naps were associated with less growth in sustained attention across time. Nighttime sleep duration interacted with language in that sleep duration was positively associated with attention scores among toddlers with less advanced language, even when SES was controlled. The findings describe an understudied aspect of how sustained attention develops, involving the main effect of consistent sleep schedules and the interaction effect of amount of sleep and child language development. These findings are relevant to understanding early childhood risk for developing attention problems and to exploring a potential prevention target in family sleep practices. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Using head-mounted eye-trackers to study sensory-motor dynamics of coordinated attention

In this chapter, we introduce recent research using head-mounted eye-trackers to record sensory-motor behaviors at a high resolution and examine parent-child interactions at a micro-level. We focus on one important research topic in early social and cognitive development: how young children and their parents coordinate their visual attention in social interactions. We start by introducing head-mounted eye-tracking and recent studies conducted using this method. We then present two sets of novel analysis techniques that examine how manual actions of parents and children with and without hearing loss contribute to their attention coordination. In the first set of analyses, we investigated different pathways parents and children used to coordinate their visual attention in toy play. After that, we used Sankey diagrams to represent the temporal dynamics of parents' and children's manual actions prior to and during coordinated attention. These two sets of analyses allowed us to explore how participants' sensory-motor behaviors contribute to the establishment and maintenance of coordinated attention. More generally, head-mounted eye-tracking allows us to ask new questions and conduct new analyses that were not previously possible. With this new sensing technology, the results here highlight the importance of understanding early social interaction from a multimodal, embodied view.

Preschool language ability is predicted by toddler hand preference trajectories

Prior work has found links between consistency in toddler handedness for the fine motor skill role-differentiated bimanual manipulation (RDBM), and language development at 2 and 3 years of age. The current study investigated whether consistency in handedness from 18 to 24 months (N = 90) for RDBM predicts receptive and expressive language abilities assessed using the Preschool Language Scales 5th edition (PLS-5) at 5 years old. Latent class growth analyses identified 3 stable RDBM hand preference trajectories: a left hand preference with moderate right hand use (left-moderate right), a right hand preference with moderate left hand use (right-moderate left), and a right hand preference with only mild left hand use (right-mild left). At 5 years of age, children with a right-mild left handedness trajectory as toddlers scored significantly higher on receptive and expressive language abilities compared to children with a left-moderate right hand preference. Children with a right-mild left hand preference for RDBM also scored significantly higher on receptive language abilities compared to children with a right-moderate left RDBM hand preference. Children with left-moderate right and children with a right-moderate left hand preference for RDBM as toddlers did not differ in receptive or expressive language abilities at 5 years. Results indicate that individual differences in hand preference consistency for fine motor skill in toddlerhood have cascading effects on language outcomes into the preschool years. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Do Gross and Fine Motor Skills Differentially Contribute to Language Outcomes? A Systematic Review

Background: Changes in motor development provide children with new learning opportunities to interact with objects, their environment, and with caregivers. Previous research finds that both gross and fine motor skills are predictive of later language outcomes across early infancy and childhood. However, gross and fine motor skills afford different types of interactions. Thus, gross and fine motor skills may potentially differ in the developmental trajectories through which cascading changes in language may occur. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether there are differences in the predictive capacities of gross and fine motor skills toward language outcomes across infancy and early childhood in typical development. Method: A systematic review of existing literature on motor-language cascades was conducted in across studies measuring gross and/or fine motor and language development in children from 0 to 5 years old. Searches were conducted in PsycINFO, PubMed, and MEDLINE. Keywords used were a combination of "gross motor," "fine motor," "motor performance," "motor development," or "psychomotor development" along with "language," "language development," or "communication skills." Two independent reviewers screened abstracts and full texts based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. Results: A total of 23 articles were retained. Of these, seven studies measured only gross motor skills, four studies measured only fine motor skills, and 12 studies measured both gross and fine motor skills in the same study. Studies used a variety of measures to assess gross motor skills, fine motor skills, and language development (e.g., parent report, in lab observations, standardized assessment), and findings varied based on analyses used. Results demonstrated that both gross and fine motor skills are related to language outcomes, but due to a smaller amount of studies testing fine motor skills, conclusions regarding whether one is more important for language outcomes cannot be drawn. Conclusions: We conclude that both gross and fine motor skills help foster language development from infancy to early childhood. Limitations regarding current knowledge regarding the mechanisms that underlie motor-language cascades are discussed, as well as the need for more studies on fine motor skills.