An event-based analysis of the coordination of early infant vocalizations and facial actions.

Abstract

This study used an event-based approach to provide empirical evidence regarding the nature of coordination in 3- and 6-month-old infants. Vocalizations and facial actions of 12 normally developing infants interacting with their caregivers were coded. Coded vocalizations and facial actions were considered coordinated when they temporally overlapped. Results indicate that infants coordinated their vocalizations and facial actions more than expected by chance. Coordinated events were governed by 2 sequence patterns. When 2 communicative events were temporally associated across modalities, 1 event tended to be completely embedded within the other, and vocalizations tended to end before facial actions. This study provides new information about how infant communication is structured, confirms results from other coordination studies, and describes a new method for analysis of event-based data.

Effects of Parental Interaction on Infant Vocalization Rate, Variability and Vocal Type

“…The transition from an interactive episode (FF) to a noninteractive episode (SF) has been interpreted as providing the impetus for infants to attempt to reestablish interaction by increasing volubility. An increase in behavior during the SF episode has been observed in a number of different studies and appears to generalize across different durations of episodes, use of parent versus stranger as interactor, and differences in adult gaze direction during still-face (Delgado et al; Goldstein et al, 2009; Delgado, Messinger, & Yale, 2002; Yale et al, 1999). According to the standard reasoning first suggested by Tronick, Als, Adamson, Wise, and Bolton (1978), it is the loss of the contingent response from the parent that appears to drive increased infant volubility.…”

“…In SF interactions, there is a violation of the unconstrained pattern of parent-infant interaction (Braungart-Reiker, Garwood, Powers, & Wong, 2001), since the parent tries not to respond to infant vocalizations or affect in any way. It has been reported that infant volubility during SF increases (Delgado, Messinger, & Yale, 2002; Goldstein et al, 2009; Yale, Messinger, Cobo-Lewis, Oller, & Eilers, 1999) for infants at 6 months. The transition from an interactive episode (FF) to a noninteractive episode (SF) has been interpreted as providing the impetus for infants to attempt to reestablish interaction by increasing volubility.…”

“…According to the standard reasoning first suggested by Tronick, Als, Adamson, Wise, and Bolton (1978), it is the loss of the contingent response from the parent that appears to drive increased infant volubility. When interaction resumes between parent and infant in the RE episode, infant volubility has been reported to decrease slightly but not to the level of the FF episode (Delgado et al, 2002; Goldstein et al, 2009; Yale et al, 1999). It seems reasonable to interpret this higher level of volubility in RE as indicating that infants are motivated to maintain interaction with the parent after having just experienced the SF.…”

“…An infant’s ability to respond systematically with speech-like sounds to vocalizations from caregivers has been documented (Farah et al, 2008; Goldstein et al, 2009; Tamis-LeMonda et al, 2001). The fact that younger infants (at 3 months) have not been shown to increase their vocalization rates in SF (Yale et al, 1999) while older infants (by 5 months) do show such an increase has been interpreted as follows: Younger infants (3 months of age) do not appear to recognize that vocal responses from the parent are systematically related to their own vocalizations, but by 5 months infants do appear to have developed an expectation that their own vocalization will elicit a response (Goldstein et al, 2009). …”

Judgements of facial and vocal signs of emotion in infants with down syndrome

“…It has been suggested that vocal expressions can have independent expressive meaning from the facial expressions with which they occur and this could be a feature of human vocalization that develops early (Oller, 2000). Thus, it seems that in young infants, vocalizations may be useful for emphasizing the message conveyed by the facial expression of joy only in the case of typically developing infants (see Yale, Messinger, Cobo-Lewis, Oller, & Eilers, 1999) and not in that of infants with Down syndrome. We thus consider that, in the case of joy in infants with Down syndrome, the facial expression should be the specific sign used by adults to determine the infant's affective state.…”