Maternal scaffolding during play with 12- to 24-month-old infants: stability over time and relations with emerging effortful control

Abstract

There is evidence that parents could influence the development of their children's effortful control in infancy through social interaction. Playful interactions in infancy often involve scaffolding -i.e. the parental provision of support and modelling for problem solving and learning during play. However, previous research has found little consistency over time in this type of parental scaffolding behaviour with infants. The present study had two aims. The first aim was to use a new, tiered coding system to assess the consistency of maternal scaffolding across toys (at the same time point) and over time. The second aim was to assess whether features of parental scaffolding related to concurrent or future measures of child effortful control. Thirty-six motherchild dyads engaged in joint play when children were 12, 18 and 24 months old. The following inhibitory/effortful control tests were administered: The 'Grasping Task', an object-retrieval task using a spoon laden with food at 12 months; Two delay of gratification tasks (Snack Delay and Gift Delay) at 24 months. The Bayley Scales of Infant Development Cognitive Scale was administered at 18 months. Maternal propensity to scaffold was the scaffolding behaviour that showed most consistency across toys and over time. Maternal contingency at 12 months predicted children's effortful control at 24 months. Sequential analysis indicated that maternal contingent interventions leading to children's successful actions could be the developmental mechanism underpinning the relationship between contingency and later effortful control. Maternal behaviour during play could lay the foundations for the strategic regulation of cognition and behaviour.

Cognitive flexibility in 12-month-old preterm and term infants is associated with neurobehavioural development in 18-month-olds

“…birth weight and postnatal age) to avoid collinearity of predictors. In addition, as in previous studies in developmental psychology or paediatrics 35,[65][66][67] , we prioritised describing as many potential developmental relationships as possible. Therefore, in the analysis, we did not apply multiple testing corrections, which lead to a substantial reduction in statistical power 68,69 .…”

The interplay between early social interaction, language and executive function development in deaf and hearing infants

“…In the context of Feldman (2012) these behaviours are seen in closely timed gaze and vocalizations, and through matching of affect and touch. In the EF literature this behaviour, overlaps with what was described as a language development facilitator previously, and is referred to as 'maternal scaffolding' (Bernier et al, 2010;Neale & Whitebread, 2019). Hughes & Ensor (2009) argued early social interaction through maternal scaffolding with infant at 2 years of age is linked to the development of early emotional and cognitive regulation.…”

“You did a great job building that!” Links between parent–child prosocial talk and spatial language.

“…Parent and child negations included corrections or verbal expressions of disapproval of the other person’s action or choices (e.g., “no, that doesn’t go there,” “wait, that’s wrong”). The DPICS uses the term “negative talk” to refer to what we call “negations.” We refrain from using the term “negative talk” because the types of mild corrective language and criticisms that we examine in the present study do not universally have “negative” connotations (e.g., Neale & Whitebread, 2019), nor is there research to suggest that they lead to negative child outcomes. Please see the Appendix (Table A2) for definitions and examples of coded social behaviors).…”