Babies vary significantly in their rate of language acquisition during the first few years of life. Disparities in language development and vocabulary growth in particular can have long term impacts for children's later academic success. How parents interact with and respond to their babies is one factor that has an important impact on babies' language development. However, it is unclear how social interactions and parent responses influence developmental change in infants. The current research will explore how parent responses to babies' vocalizations affect the babies' visual attention in the moment as a potential pathway to longer-term language development. Understanding the relations among responsiveness, visual attention, and subsequent language development can reveal how everyday social interactions support language learning.
Mothers' and fathers' social interactions with their 6- to 12-month-old infants will be observed. Observation periods will be coded for infant vocalization, parental responsiveness, and infant visual attention following parental responses. The data will be analyzed for relations between infant vocalizations and parent responses, between parent responses and infant attention, and between observations and subsequent language development as indexed by parental report language questionnaires administered when infants are 15 and 24 months of age. Broad hypotheses include: parent responses will affect infant attention and this will influence language learning; parents will be more responsive to behaviors that are more speech-like and communicative; different types of parent responses will affect infant behavior differently --some responses will more positively impact language development. An important outcome of the research project will be linking parents' responsiveness and infants' visual attention and variation in vocabulary growth to help understand individual differences in language development. The findings will inform theories of development by relating the dynamics of moment-to-moment behaviors to learning and development. Furthermore, the research findings have the potential to inform interventions or parenting advice to promote language development in all children, particularly those who are at risk for delays.
