Sharing sounds: The development of auditory joint engagement during early parent–child interaction.

Abstract

Joint engagement—the sharing of events during social interactions—is an important context for early learning. To date, sharing topics that are only heard has not been systematically documented. To describe the development of auditory joint engagement, 48 child–parent dyads were observed 5 times from 12 to 30 months during seminaturalistic play. Reactions to 4 types of sounds—overheard speech about the child, instrumental music, animal calls, and mechanical noises—were observed before and as parents scaffolded shared listening and after the sound ceased. Before parents reacted, even 12-month-old infants readily alerted and oriented to the sounds; over time they increasingly tried to share new sounds with their parents. When parents then joined in sharing a sound, periods of auditory joint engagement often ensued, increasing from two thirds of 12-month observations to almost ceiling level at the 18- through 30-month observations. Overall, the developmental course and structure of auditory joint engagement and joint engagement with multimodal objects and events are remarkably similar. Symbol-infused auditory joint engagement occurred rarely at first but increased steadily. Children’s labeling of the sound and parents’ language scaffolding also increased linearly while child pointing toward it rose until 18 months and then declined. Future studies should address variations in the development of auditory joint engagement, whether autism spectrum disorder affects how toddlers share sounds, and the role auditory joint engagement may play in gestural and language development.

Autism Adversely Affects Auditory Joint Engagement During Parent–toddler Interactions

“…During the CPP‐A, four types of sounds— speech , music , animal calls , and mechanical noises —are presented in four auditory scenes in order to probe whether the attributes of various sound might influence how they are shared. In our longitudinal study [Adamson et al, 2019b], we found that even 12‐month‐old toddlers readily interrupted on‐going play with their parents to orient to a new sound and that they often shared sounds with their parents. By 18 months auditory joint engagement was so well‐established that it occurred at almost every opportunity.…”

“…However, first we performed analyses that assessed whether the CPP‐A was appropriate for toddlers at‐risk for ASD and their parents. Given our previous experience using semi‐naturalistic communication plays to observe multimodal joint engagement in toddlers with ASD [Adamson et al, 2009, 2019a], we anticipated that almost all parents in this new study would, as did the parents of TD children in the longitudinal study [Adamson et al, 2019b], comply with our instructions by not attending to the sound during the ignore‐sound phase (Hypothesis 1.1). Also, we anticipated (Hypothesis 1.2) that children, regardless of group, would not display hypersensitivity when we played sounds that were not loud and that, unlike sounds such as barking or a vacuum cleaner's roar, toddlers with ASD as well as other toddlers might associate with feared events [Lucker, 2013].…”

“…However, this research has focused almost exclusively on the sharing of visible objects, be they solely seen (e.g., shared looking at pictures) or potentially touched and heard as well (e.g., shared exploration of toys). This restriction leaves unclear whether problems associated with visual joint engagement generalize across modalities [Adamson, Bakeman, Suma, & Robins, 2019b; Akhtar & Gernsbacher, 2007]. Overlooking auditory joint engagement—how children share sounds during social interactions—is of particular concern because sounds convey important information not fully duplicated in other modalities, most notably about language and about displaced entities that are hidden from view.…”

“…There is substantial evidence that sounds are indeed shared during interactions between typically‐developing children and their social partners, including observations of the rhythms of speech and music organizing the flow of early face‐to‐face interactions [Stern, 1985] and of toddlers acquiring words that are introduced during periods of joint attention [Tomasello & Farrar, 1986]. Recently, we [Adamson et al, 2019b] systematically plotted the developmental trajectory of how sounds that start to play during on‐going interactions are shared by typically developing toddlers from 12‐ to 30‐months using a semi‐naturalistic protocol, the Communication Play Protocol‐Auditory [CPP‐A; Adamson, Bakeman, Suma, Kellerman, & Brandon, 2016]. This protocol lets us observe how toddlers initially react to a sound before their parents attend to it (during what we call the ignore‐sound phase because parents are instructed to ignore the sound and the toddler's reaction to it).…”

Dyadic interactions in children exhibiting the broader autism phenotype: Is the broader autism phenotype distinguishable from typical development?

“…Separate coders rated parent–child play interactions for joint engagement and child responsiveness on a 7‐point Likert scale using a subset of Adamson, Bakeman, and Suma's () Joint Engagement Rating Inventory (JERI). The joint engagement ratings (i.e., total joint (TJE), supported joint (SJE), and coordinated joint (CJE)) are categorical variables with values ranging from 1 to 7 to index time spent and the quality of the engagement.…”