Maternal Responsiveness and the Development of Directed Vocalizing in Social Interactions

Abstract

For effective communication, infants must develop the phonology of sounds and the ability to use vocalizations in social interactions. Few studies have examined the development of the pragmatic use of prelinguistic vocalizations, possibly because gestures are considered hallmarks of early pragmatic skill. The current study investigated infant vocal production and maternal responsiveness to examine the relationship between infant and maternal behavior in the development of infants' vocal communication. Specifically, we asked whether maternal responses to vocalizations could influence the development of prelinguistic vocal usage, as has been documented in recent experimental studies exploring the relation between maternal responses and phonological development. Twelve mother–infant dyads participated over a six‐month period (between 8 and 14 months of age). Mothers completed the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory when infants were 15 months old. Maternal sensitive responses to infant vocalizations in the previous months predicted infants' mother‐directed vocalizations in the following months, rather than overall response rate. Furthermore, mothers' sensitive responding to mother‐directed vocalizations was correlated with an increase in developmentally advanced, consonant–vowel vocalizations and some language measures. This is the first study to document a social shaping mechanism influencing developmental change in pragmatic usage of vocalizations in addition to identifying the specific behaviors underlying development.

Language development at 18 months is related to multimodal communicative strategies at 12 months

“…Likewise, research on infants' gesture production has shown that communicative gestures (e.g., iconic and pointing gestures) signal intentional communication (Bates et al, 1979;Bavin et al, 2008;Caselli, Rinaldi, Stefanini, & Volterra, 2012) and that pointing gestures with a declarative intention are a good predictor of the emergence of verbal language (Colonnesi, Stams, Koster, & Noom, 2010). On the other hand, literature on speech development has also documented that acoustic measures of early infants' vocalizations vary depending according to their communicative intentionality (Esteve-Gibert & Prieto, 2014) and that vocalizations coordinated with gaze directed at the referent affect adult-infant social interactions and support language learning (Goldstein, Schwade, Briesch, & Syal, 2010;Gros-Louis, West, & King, 2014). While some studies with slightly older infants have shown that one particular use of supplementary gesture-speech combinations -that in which the gesture modality conveys a different meaning than the one conveyed by speech -predicts the onset of grammatical development (Capirci, Iverson, Pizzuto, & Volterra, 1996;Iverson & Goldin-Meadow, 2005;Özç aliskan & Goldin-Meadow, 2005;Pizzuto, Capobianco, & Devescovi, 2005;Rowe & GoldinMeadow, 2009), the emergence of simultaneous gesture-speech combinations (i.e., gesture co-occurring with speech to express the same meaning) and their relation to later language development has not been analyzed in detail.…”

Socially contingent responsivity: finding a link between statistical learning and understanding the referential nature of words

“…In most cases, the time window between infants' and adults' behaviors was chosen to be 1 second as a criterion of contingency (Bigelow, 1996;Bigelow & Rochat, 2006;Bigelow & Power, 2014;Kochanska & Aksan, 2004;Lohaus et al, 2005). In a number of experiments, the time window was longer: 2 seconds (Mcquaid et al, 2009;Bornstein et al, 2015;Gros-Louis, West, & King, 2014) or 5 seconds (Baumwell, Tamis-LeMonda, & Bornstein, 1997;45 Olson, Bates, & Bayles, 1984) following infants' actions. In some cases, the time window used as a criterion of contingency was not specified (Goldstein, King, & West, 2003;Bornstein & Tamis-LeMonda, 1989).…”

“…Such behaviors included smiles and vocalizations (Bigelow & Rochat, 2006;Mcquaid et al, 2009;Bornstein et al, 2015), where vocalizations sometimes were restricted to non-distress (Bigelow & Power, 2014) or positive (Kochanska & Aksan, 2004) and directed at objects or interlocutors (Baumwell, Tamis-LeMonda, & Bornstein, 1997;Gros-Louis, West, & King, 2014).…”

“…In some studies, such behaviors included smiles, vocalizations and facial expressions (Bigelow, 1996;Bigelow & Rochat, 2006;Bigelow & Power, 2014;Mcquaid et al, 2009;Bornstein et al, 2015). Other studies also included verbal acknowledgements or directives, moves towards infants and touches, and verbal imitations (Bornstein & Tamis-LeMonda, 1989;Baumwell, Tamis-LeMonda, & Bornstein, 1997;Goldstein, King, & West, 2003;Kochanska & Aksan, 2004;Lohaus et al, 2005;Gros-Louis, West, & King, 2014). Contingent responses of both infants and adults were used to calculate a number of quantitative measures, including rates of responses, their frequency and probability.…”

The Effect of the Home-Centered Mother-Infant Interaction Program on Infant Development Through Mutual Interaction And Mothers’ Intuitive Behaviors

“…Kontrol grubunda da son test puan ortalamasına göre ön test puan ortalamasındaki değişim istatistiksel olarak anlamsız bulunmuştur (p=0.572; p>0.05). Deney grubundaki bebeklerin dil gelişimlerindeki artışın önemsiz olması sonucu, anne-bebek etkileşimsel davranışlarının bebeğin dil gelişimini olumlu etkilediğini ortaya koyan bazı araştırmalarla uyumlu görünmezken (Magagna, 2013;Gros-Louis, West ve King, 2014); anne-bebek etkileşimine ilişkin davranışların bebeğin dil gelişimini artırmada etkili olmadığı araştırma bulgularıyla paralellik göstermektedir (Capirci, Caselli, Iverson, Pizzuto ve Volterra, 2002). Araştırmada Ev Merkezli Anne-Bebek Etkileşim Programı'nın bebeğin dil gelişiminin artırılmasında herhangi bir etki oluşturmaması, programın kapsamı ve niteliği göz önüne alınarak açıklanabilir.…”