Transition From Crawling to Walking Changes Gaze Communication Space in Everyday Infant-Parent Interaction

Abstract

Acquisition of walking changes not only infants' locomotion itself but also infants' exploratory behavior and social interaction, such as gaze communication. To understand the ecological context in which gaze communication occurs and how it changes with walking development from the point of view of the spatial arrangement of infants, parents, and objects, we analyzed longitudinal data of daily eye contact scenes recorded from head-mounted eye trackers worn by parents as infants grew from 10 to 15.5 months, focusing on infant-parent distance and the number of objects between the dyad. A Bayesian state-space model revealed that the interpersonal distance at which infants initiated eye contact with their parents increased with the time ratio of walking to crawling. This result could not be explained by the developmental change in the amount of time that the infants were far from the parents, which is not limited to the gaze communication context. Moreover, the interpersonal distance at which the parents initiated eye contact with the infants did not increase with the time ratio of walking to crawling. The number of objects on the floor between infants and parents at the time of eye contact increased with interpersonal distance. Taken together, these results indicate that the transition from crawling to walking changes the ecological context in which infants initiate gaze communication to a visual environment characterized by a larger interpersonal distance and, therefore, more objects cluttered between the dyad. The present study has wider implications for the developmental change of shared attention in conjunction with walking development.

Head and body structure infants’ visual experiences during mobile, naturalistic play

“…Infants may selectively attend to objects to engage in object manipulation and explore object properties [15,[17][18][19][20]. Second, body posture (e.g., prone, sitting, and upright) shapes infants' visual attention [21][22][23][24]. Whereas in a screen-viewing study participants are seated with information easily viewed in front of the face, real-world visual attention is shaped by the orientation of the body.…”

Influencia de un programa de juegos pueriles sobre la coordinación motriz en estudiantes de educación básica (Incidence of a childish games program on motor coordination in students of basic education)

“…Fecha de aceptación: 31-05-21 Víctor Miguel Ángel Burbano Pantoja victor.burbano@uptc.edu.co der por una mejora en su calidad vital e incluso en su autoestima infantil (Lizarazo, Burbano & Valdivieso, 2020). En general, un aspecto central de la motricidad lo constituye la CM, la cual puede promoverse desde el hogar (Yamamoto, Sato & Itakura, 2020) o en la escuela (Reyes, et al, 2019). La CM ha sido estudiada en diversos contextos, en condiciones normales (Grohs, Reynolds, Dewey & Lebel, 2018;Oberer, Gashaj & Roebers, 2018) o en individuos con alguna discapacidad (Vargas, Acaro, Pintado & Jurado, 2021;Keawutan, Bell, Oftedal, Davies, Ware, & Boyd et al, 2018;VanCappellen, VanAbswoude, Krajenbrink & Steenbergen, 2018).…”

Communication changes when infants begin to walk

“…Prior work indicates that walking infants gesture, vocalize, and look to their caregivers more often than crawlers do (Clearfield, 2011; Clearfield et al, 2008; Walle, 2016; Yamamoto et al, 2020). For example, Clearfield (2011) reported that socially directed vocalizations and gestures doubled when infants were walking, compared to a prior session in which infants crawled or moved in a baby‐walker.…”

“…Prior literature suggests that walking has a cascading effect on infant communication, influencing how often infants gesture, vocalize, and approach caregivers, and in turn, caregiver responses (e.g., Clearfield, 2011; Clearfield et al, 2008; Karasik et al, 2014; Walle, 2016; Yamamoto et al, 2020). However, there are important limitations to this work.…”