| Popis: |
Everyday caregiver-infant interactions are multimodal and dynamic. However, the quality and quantity of infant-directed speech (IDS) has received primary focus in much existing research on infants’ natural interactions with caregivers. While speech is a ubiquitous feature of infant experience, focusing on speech alone undercuts the full richness of infants’ everyday learning environments. Here, to augment this research, we introduce “infant-directed communication” (IDC): the suite of communicative signals from caregivers to infants including speech, action, gesture, emotion, and touch. We recorded 10 minutes of at-home play between 44 caregivers and their 18- to 24-month-old infants from predominantly white, middle-class, English-speaking families in the United States. Interactions were coded for the five dimensions of IDC as well as infants’ gestures and vocalizations. Most caregivers used all five dimensions of IDC throughout the interaction, and over 60% of the speech that infants heard was accompanied by one or more non-verbal communicative cues. However, we saw marked variation across caregivers in their use of IDC, likely reflecting tailored communication to the behaviors and abilities of their own infant. Moreover, caregivers systematically increased their use of IDC in response to infant gestures and vocalizations, and used more IDC with infants who had smaller vocabularies. Understanding how and when caregivers use these five signals in interactions with infants has the potential to redefine how developmental scientists conceive of infants’ early learning environments, and enhance our understanding of relations between caregiver input and early learning. |
