Poster #155 - The relative role of attention and social engagement in the development of parent-child interaction

• In Event: 2-055 - Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Social interaction between caregiver and child is foundational for language development. Interactions characterized by joint engagement, routines and rituals and fluid communication predict children’s language skills above and beyond the amount of talk they hear (Hirsh-Pasek et al., 2015). Salley and colleagues (2016) found that both early attention and social engagement affect joint attention at different developmental timepoints; proposing that social engagement is an important factor later on, when joint attention becomes more socially driven. However, in using the still face paradigm, Salley and colleagues may have underestimated the role of attention in social engagement. The present study examines the independent contributions of early attention and social engagement on the development of parent-child interactions.

Methods
Participants were recruited as part of a larger longitudinal study; the final sample was comprised of 68 children. To assess whether children’s early social engagement is related to the quality of parent-child interactions, children’s social engagement was measured at 4-months and the parent-child interaction quality was evaluated at 14-months.
Social engagement was measured using the still face paradigm (SF) (Tronic, Als, Adamson, Wise, & Brazelton, 1978). SF measures children’s gaze, positive affect, and negative affect during 3 phases: baseline, still face, and reunion. Five minute videos of the children at 14-months-old were coded for joint engagement (JE) during mother-child interactions. The amount of JE was evaluated on a 7-point Likert scale, with 1-point indicating no joint engagement, 4-points indicating engagement half the time, and 7-points indicating engagement the full time.

Results
JE scores were used to split children into high and low engagement groups. Low engagement scores were 4 or lower (n = 38), and high engagement scores were 5 and above (n=30). A 2 (group) x 3 (phase) ANOVA was used to test the hypothesis that children’s early attention and social engagement is related to later joint engagement. Children who were high engagers had shorter gazes during the baseline SF phase (F(1,66) = 6.095, p = .02). There were no significant effects of group during the still face phase or reunion. Furthermore, there was no effect of group on either negative or positive affect across the two samples. Children in the high engagement group gaze less at their mothers during the brief initial interaction, indicating that children’s attention, and not affect is related to their subsequent joint engagement.

Discussion
Joint engagement relies on the confluence of attention and social engagement. Our results highlight the importance of children’s developing attentional ability for joint engagement. While others have found a relation between early social engagement and joint attention (Salley et al., 2016), we do not find such a relationship with joint engagement. In separating the attentional measures from the affective measures, our results indicate that attention might be driving social engagement. Further analyses will explore whether these findings are due to our measure and will test the hypothesis that social engagement skills come online when the interaction is more natural. Altogether, these findings add to our understanding of how attention and social engagement shape parent-child interactions.

Authors

• Brianna McMillan, Temple University
  Presenting Author

• Lillian Masek, Temple University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sarah Paterson, Temple University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Andrew Ribner, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Temple University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Clancy Blair, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author