Comparative and Individual Perspectives on Mother–Infant Interactions with People and Objects among South Koreans, Korean Americans, and European Americans

Responsiveness in mother-infant social interactions among immigrant and nonmigrant families: Japanese, South Korean, South American, and European American

A culture learning perspective motivated the present study of the acculturation of responsiveness in mother-infant interactions. Several conceptual and analytic features of responsiveness in mother-infant social interactions were examined: Temporal contingency, mean differences in responsiveness among and within dyads, attunement of mother and infant responsiveness withing dyads, and the influence of acculturation on individual responsiveness. Methodologically, acculturation was assessed at group and individual levels in immigrant Japanese, South Korean, and South American dyads in comparison with nonmigrant dyads in their respective cultures of origin (Japan, South Korea, and South America) and their single common culture of destination (United States). In total, 408 mothers and their 5½-month-old infants were observed in the naturalistic setting of the home, and observations were coded for mothers' speech to infant, social play, and encouraging her infant to look at her, and infants' looking at mother and nondistress vocalizations. Odds ratios were then generated for mother and infant responsiveness in four types of social interactions: Mother speaks to infant and infant looks at mother (Mother Speak/Infant Attend), mother plays with infant and infant looks at mother (Mother Play/Infant Attend), mother plays with infant and infant vocalizes (Mother Play/Infant Vocalize), and mother encourages infant to look at her and infant vocalizes (Mother Encourage/Infant Vocalize). Five key findings emerged. Specifically, mother and infant responsiveness in Mother Speak/Infant Attend interactions were temporally contingent in all cultures. Mean differences in responsiveness among cultures emerged, and within dyads infants were more responsive than their mothers in Mother Speak/Infant Attend interactions. Mother and infant responsiveness in Mother Speak/Infant Attend interactions were attuned in all cultures. Responsiveness in Mother Play/Infant Vocalize interactions showed acculturation effects at the individual level. Implications of these findings for understanding the development of responsiveness in social interactions and acculturation in immigrant families are discussed.

Maternal attitudes and behaviours differentially shape infant early life experience: A cross cultural study

Early life environments afford infants a variety of learning opportunities, and caregivers play a fundamental role in shaping infant early life experience. Variation in maternal attitudes and parenting practices is likely to be greater between than within cultures. However, there is limited cross-cultural work characterising how early life environment differs across populations. We examined the early life environment of infants from two cultural contexts where attitudes towards parenting and infant development were expected to differ: in a group of 53 mother-infant dyads in the UK and 44 mother-infant dyads in Uganda. Participants were studied longitudinally from when infants were 3- to 15-months-old. Questionnaire data revealed the Ugandan mothers had more relational attitudes towards parenting than the mothers from the UK, who had more autonomous parenting attitudes. Using questionnaires and observational methods, we examined whether infant development and experience aligned with maternal attitudes. We found the Ugandan infants experienced a more relational upbringing than the UK infants, with Ugandan infants receiving more distributed caregiving, more body contact with their mothers, and more proximity to mothers at night. Ugandan infants also showed earlier physical development compared to UK infants. Contrary to our expectations, however, Ugandan infants were not in closer proximity to their mothers during the day, did not have more people in proximity or more partners for social interaction compared to UK infants. In addition, when we examined attitudes towards specific behaviours, mothers' attitudes rarely predicted infant experience in related contexts. Taken together our findings highlight the importance of measuring behaviour, rather than extrapolating expected behaviour based on attitudes alone. We found infants' early life environment varies cross-culturally in many important ways and future research should investigate the consequences of these differences for later development.

Parent-Child Joint Behaviors in Novel Object Play Create High-Quality Data for Word Learning

This research takes a dyadic approach to study early word learning and focuses on toddlers' (N = 20, age: 17-23 months) information seeking and parents' information providing behaviors and the ways the two are coupled in real-time parent-child interactions. Using head-mounted eye tracking, this study provides the first detailed comparison of children's and their parents' behavioral and attentional patterns in two free-play contexts: one with novel objects with to-be-learned names (Learning condition) and the other with familiar objects with known names (Play condition). Children and parents in the Learning condition modified their individual and joint behaviors when encountering novel objects with to-be-learned names, which created clearer signals that reduced referential ambiguity and potentially facilitated word learning.

Synchrony in mother-infant vocal interactions revealed through timed event sequences

This report extends a previous cross-cultural study of synchrony in mother-infant vocal interactions (Bornstein et al., 2015) to immigrant samples. Immigrant dyads from three cultures of origin (Japan, South Korea, South America) living in the same culture of destination (the United States) were compared to nonmigrant dyads in those same cultures of origin and to nonmigrant European American dyads living in the same culture of destination (the United States). This article highlights an underutilized analysis to assess synchrony in mother-infant interaction and extends cross-cultural research on mother-infant vocal interaction. Timing of onsets and offsets of maternal speech to infants and infant nondistress vocalizations were coded separately from 50-min recorded naturalistic observations of mothers and infants. Odds ratios were computed to analyze synchrony in mother-infant vocal interactions. Synchrony was analyzed in three ways -- contingency of timed event sequences, mean differences in contingency by acculturation level and within dyads, and coordination of responsiveness within dyads. Immigrant mothers were contingently responsive to their infants' vocalizations, but only Korean immigrant infants were contingently responsive to their mothers' vocalizations. For the Japanese and South American comparisons, immigrant mothers were more contingently responsive than their infants (but not robustly so for South American immigrants). For the Korean comparison, mean differences in contingent responsiveness were found among acculturation groups (culture of origin, immigrant, culture of destination), but not between mothers and infants. Immigrant dyads' mean levels of responsiveness did not differ. Immigrant mothers' and infants' levels of responsiveness were coordinated. Strengths and flexibility of the timed event sequential analytic approach to assessing synchrony in mother-infant interactions are discussed, particularly for culturally diverse samples.

Foundations of attention sharing: Orienting and responding to attention in term and preterm 5-month-old infants

Attention is the gateway to perceptual, cognitive, and socioemotional development in humans. We observed 104 5-month-old term and preterm infants and their mothers in social interactions to address three questions about the role of maturation in orienting and responding to attention. We used a fine-grained coding system to allow parallel comparisons across infant and maternal orienting, and sequential analysis to evaluate infant and maternal responding to attention. Orienting and responding to attention differed for attention to people versus objects, as did the relations between maturity and attention. We conclude that maturity contributes to orienting and responding to attention and that orienting and responding to attention are specific rather than homogenous. We discuss the implications of these conclusions for future studies of how attention influences cognitive and communicative development.