Adult-child Interactions Research Articles

Invitations to play: designing for family engagement through STEAM exhibits in community settings

Intergenerational play between children and their family members provides a rich context that can inform family-centered interaction design. Despite research on the roles and perspectives in adult-child interactions, less is known about the design elements and features of voluntary interaction settings that provide opportunities for family members to collaborate and play in joint, balanced ways. To this end, we report the qualitative results of our design and implementation of three interactive STEAM exhibits installed in an early childhood education center over a six-month period. Our findings surface insights and tensions related to the design features’ impact on supporting family engagement in STEAM exhibits, emergent aspects of family-centered play, and supports needed to implement family-centered STEAM exhibits. Other designers, such as those who design with new technologies or explore human–computer interactions, can learn from our process of iteration and adjustment based on family interactions.

‘You Know What They Know’- An Autoethnography of Working with Child Participants

The present study explores the experiential avenues of working with children as research participants through a critical lens. Using the qualitative method of autoethnography, the article captures the unique characteristics of working with children in research given the socio-political contexts of adult-child interactions. The thematic descriptions resulting from analyzing extensive field notes and anecdotes from the experience as a researcher try to highlight the challenges faced during the process. The study challenges adult-centric assumptions, and suggests strategies that lead to more effective and relevant policies and interventions. Including children’s perspectives also fosters their sense of agency, reduces power imbalances, and captures the diversity of their experiences.

Joint responses to crying

One of the fascinating challenges in adult-child interaction is found in the fine-grained coordination of joint activities in the real time of play-interactions. In this contribution we take a closer look at caregiving activities that are jointly carried out by mothers and their five-year-old children. At this age, changing diapers, feeding, and comforting a crying baby (doll) is a challenging activity. The focus of our empirical study is on responses to crying. The investigation is innovative in so far as in prior research it was always the reaction by the mother (or the father or, not so often, by the sibling) that was under scrutiny. Here, we analyse sequentially how children comfort a lifelike doll together with their mother.

“We tend to underestimate the children!” – a qualitative analysis of preschool teachers’ views on child-parent-teacher relationship-building during preschool transition

ABSTRACT Upon preschool enrollment, the child-teacher relationship becomes important for the child’s continued development. We suggest that parents may be essential in supporting the establishment of such relationships from the first weeks of the child’s preschool enrollment, the so-called “introduction process”. Recent data indicates that Nordic preschools organize this aspect of preschool introduction differently, but no empirically informed knowledge-base exists on how to best support positive family-teacher interactions. To enrich this sparse topic, we conducted focus groups with Swedish preschool professionals (N = 31) to qualitatively acquire experiences and reflections on child-adult interactions during preschool introduction. Thematic analysis revealed two themes, centering around emotional security and the need to introduce the child and the parent(s). While emphasizing the importance of the parent’s presence near the child during the introduction process, dilemmas and conflicting ideas about how to arrange child-adult interactions were revealed, with potential implications for the child’s transition and the child-teacher relationship-building.

Caregiver response types and children language outcomes in preschoolers with and without hearing loss in Aotearoa New Zealand

ABSTRACT Recent advances in audiological early intervention and hearing technologies have significantly improved access to spoken language for children with hearing loss (CwHL), but many CwHL require additional support to match the language development of their peers with normal hearing (PwNH). Programmes such as It Takes Two to Talk®, the Hanen Program® and Talking Matters focus on supporting parents to enhance children’s language development in natural environments. Analysis of response types has become a significant trend, facilitated by technological developments like Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA®), which provides uninterrupted recordings and automated calculations of adult–child interactions. This research examined three child language measures, child vocalisation counts, total number of words, and mean length of utterance, comparing CwHL and PwNH. Transcribed excerpts of LENA recordings were coded to determine caregivers’ use of ‘high-level’ responses in exchanges with their children and were correlated with child language outcomes. The results confirm the crucial role of caregiver response types in enhancing child language outcomes and exemplify the bidirectional relationship of caregiver-child interactions. The findings add to the literature to suggest that families and educators would benefit from guidance and coaching to acquire and apply high-level response types during natural spoken language interactions with CwHL.

Gestures, Objects, and Spaces: Exploring Teachers' Multimodal Communication in Nursery Schools.

This study builds on the increasing evidence that the multimodal nature of adult-child interactions and the use of objects play an important role in early linguistic development. Most of these studies analyzed dyadic interactions at home, whereas few research has been conducted in early childhood education and care settings. In this paper, we characterized the multimodal nature of teachers' communicative bids during classroom-based group interactions in nursery schools. Observational data of circle-time activities was collected from 16 Spanish nursery school classrooms, comprising 16 teachers and 161 children between two and three years of age. We analyzed teachers' communicative bids (i.e., verbal utterances and verbal-gestural bids) considering the frequency of use of different types of gestures, to whom are they addressed (i.e., the whole group or a single child), the extent to which they involve the use of objects, the classroom layout, and the relationship between the communicative bids and the number of children that participated in each classroom. Teachers' communication with toddlers is highly multimodal and rely on different types of gestures, although the use of objects in our sample was scarce. Descriptive analysis suggest that certain classroom layouts may favor teachers' use of some types of gestures over others. In this article, we discuss the implications of both the use of objects and space for understanding how adults shape the linguistic contexts of young children, and the potential opportunities and limitations they pose for classroom interactions.

Children's anthropomorphism of inanimate agents.

This review article examines the extant literature on animism and anthropomorphism in infants and young children. A substantial body of work indicates that both infants and young children have a broad concept of what constitutes a sentient agent and react to inanimate objects as they do to people in the same context. The literature has also revealed a developmental pattern in which anthropomorphism decreases with age, but social robots appear to be an exception to this pattern. Additionally, the review shows that children attribute psychological properties to social robots less so than people but still anthropomorphize them. Importantly, some research suggests that anthropomorphism of social robots is dependent upon their morphology and human-like behaviors. The extent to which children anthropomorphize robots is dependent on their exposure to them and the presence of human-like features. Based on the existing literature, we conclude that in infancy, a large range of inanimate objects (e.g., boxes, geometric figures) that display animate motion patterns trigger the same behaviors observed in child-adult interactions, suggesting some implicit form of anthropomorphism. The review concludes that additional research is needed to understand what infants and children judge as social agents and how the perception of inanimate agents changes over the lifespan. As exposure to robots and virtual assistants increases, future research must focus on better understanding the full impact that regular interactions with such partners will have on children's anthropomorphizing. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Learning Cognitive Biology > Cognitive Development Computer Science and Robotics > Robotics.

Интерпсихическое начало учебного действия моделирования

<p>The content of education becomes the key to the development of the learner's agency when the teacher encourages children to independently construct a new concept using educational models. Using the case study method, we analyzed child-adult interactions at one of the key points of the emergence of children's independence in working with educational models. For this study we analyzed the lessons, where the primer by D.B. Elkonin was used. The focus of our observations was on the stage of transformation of the original model of sound-letter relations when students are faced with facts that contradict the principle described in this model. It is shown that in this situation, the initiative of learners can be directed by the adult entirely to the conceptual content of their work and presented in two modalities: in thinking about the connections between already learned concepts and new ones, constructed here and now, and in understanding the thoughts of classmates about these connections. At the same time, the teacher's efforts in real educational interaction are directed primarily at interweaving the disparate threads of children's conceptual initiatives, and in this way, at building a form of cooperation that is adequate to the content of notions constructed by students.</p>

Соотношение Мотива и Способа в актах развития действия

<p>The article raises a question how the cultural-historical psychology today should be reserached. The analysis of transitions of periods of childhood, periods (ages) and epochs of development, presented in D.B. Elkonin's understanding of the essence of periodization of child’s developement requires the identification of the situations when clearly appears the correlation of motive, purpose and method in the cumulative action of a child and an adult. Identifying such situations requires a change in the position of the researcher-experimenter, a consideration of the way and conditions of the child-adult interaction, i.e., a consideration of situations in which the Mediating Action unfolds. It’s required from the researchers in Nonclassical Psychology.</p>

Inclusion of children with autism spectrum disorder in preschool: Investigation of adult–child interactions in two inclusive classes over one school year

AbstractBased on a complex dynamic system approach, this study examined the dynamic of interactions between adults (a teacher and teaching assistant) and two children with ASD. We observed two preschool classrooms, each containing one child with contrasting ASD characteristics. Child engagement and adult participation during welcome time activities were observed once a month for 9 months; dramatic differences in interaction dynamics between the two classes were revealed. In the class including an autistic child with high support needs and low language ability, the active participation of adults associated with active child engagement gradually increased over the year. In the class including an autistic child with a high level of challenging behaviours (but with low support needs and typical language skills), increased variability resulted in a deep change in the landscape of attractors. Whereas the child was mostly engaged with adult participation during the first trimester, he was actively engaged without adult participation in the final trimester.

A morphologically annotated longitudinal corpus of spoken Czech child–adult interactions

A morphologically annotated longitudinal corpus of spoken Czech child–adult interactions

Roles and Effect of Digital Technology on Young Children’s STEM Education: A Scoping Review of Empirical Studies

Digital technology is increasingly used in STEM education for young children aged 0–8 years. An extensive literature search was conducted using seven databases to systematically investigate the effect of digital technology on young children’s STEM education. Twenty-two eligible articles published from 2010 to 2021 were identified. Results showed that robotics, programming, and multimedia were used to support young children’s STEM education. Digital technology plays different roles in the process of STEM education. Outcomes also showed that digital technology positively affected young children’s STEM education in terms of STEM knowledge or skill acquisition and learning engagement. This was regardless of gender but relevant to age and the learning condition. Participating children and teachers reported high acceptance and satisfaction with the included programs. However, many difficulties, challenges and criticisms were revealed by the extracted data, including how digital technology is used in young children’s STEM education, the nature of young children, the requirements placed upon educators, and different types of adult–child interactions. We also look at the limitations of the study design within included studies and provide recommendations accordingly.

Lexical Alignment is Pervasive Across Contexts in Non-WEIRD Adult-Child Interactions.

Lexical alignment, a communication phenomenon where conversational partners adapt their word choices to become more similar, plays an important role in the development of language and social communication skills. While this has been studied extensively in the conversations of preschool-aged children and their parents in Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) communities, research in other pediatric populations is sparse. This study makes significant expansions on the existing literature by focusing on alignment in naturalistic conversations of school-aged children from a non-WEIRD population across multiple conversational tasks and with different types of adult partners. Typically developing children aged 5 to 8 years (n = 45) engaged in four semi-structured conversations that differed by task (problem-solving vs. play-based) and by partner (parent vs. university student), resulting in a corpus of 180 conversations. Lexical alignment scores were calculated and compared to sham conversations, representing alignment occurring at the level of chance. Both children and adults coordinated their conversational utterances by re-using or aligning each other's word choices. This alignment behavior persisted across conversational tasks and partners, although the degree of alignment was moderated by the conversational context. These findings suggest that lexical alignment is a robust phenomenon in conversations between school-age children and adults. Furthermore, this study extends lexical alignment findings to a non-WEIRD culture, suggesting that alignment may be a coordination strategy employed by adults and children across diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

Early childhood educator and director experiences of speech pathology-led professional development: A qualitative study

Background: Quality early childhood interactions, especially quality adult–child interactions, are known to form the foundation of future skills associated with social, academic and communicative development. Speech-language therapists (SLTs) can engage with educators in professional development to improve communication environments for children. Understanding the perspectives of early childhood directors and educators in relation to the feasibility, sustainability and impact of professional development is needed. Aim(s): This study investigated the experiences of early childhood educators and directors who participated in a SLT-led professional development training program. Method: Participants were four directors and six early childhood educators. Directors participated in one focus group; educators participated in individual semi-structured interviews. All participants were female and had between 5 and 38 years of experience. They were interviewed following the completion of an eight-week training program. Verbatim transcripts of the director focus group and educator interviews were thematically analysed using NVivo12. Result(s): Three overarching themes were developed. These were the appropriateness and acceptability of the training, impact and professional engagement with eight subsequent themes also identified. Although participants reported positive experiences participating in the training, several practical and translational challenges were identified. Conclusion: The professional development training implemented by SLTs was influenced by a number of factors that assisted or hindered educator and director experience of the program. The appropriateness, acceptability and feasibility of a professional development (PD) program should carefully consider participants’ learning needs and workplace environments.

Spontaneous bodily coordination varies across affective and intellectual child-adult interactions.

Research on child-adult interactions has identified that the morphology of bodily coordination seems to be sensitive to age and type of interaction. Mirror-like imitation emerges earlier in life and is more common during emotionally laden interactions, while anatomical imitation is acquired later and associated with cognitive tasks. However, it remains unclear whether these morphologies also vary with age and type of interaction during spontaneous coordination. Here we report a motion capture study comparing the spontaneous coordination patterns of thirty-five 3-year-old (20 girls; Mage = 3.15 years) and forty 6-year-old children (20 girls; Mage = 6.13 years) interacting with unacquainted adults during two storytelling sessions. The stories narrated the search of a character for her mother (Predominantly Affective Condition) or an object (Predominantly Intellectual Condition) inside a supermarket. Results show that children of both ages consistently coordinated their spontaneous movements towards adult storytellers, both in symmetric and asymmetric ways. However, symmetric coordination was more prominent in 3-year-old children and during predominantly emotional interactions, whereas asymmetric coordination prevailed in 6-year-old children and during predominantly intellectual interactions. These results add evidence from spontaneous interactions in favor of the hypothesis that symmetric coordination is associated with affective interactions and asymmetric coordination with intellectual ones.

Improving Parent-Child Interaction and Reducing Parental Violent Discipline – a Multi-Informant Multi-Method Pilot Feasibility Study of a School-Based Intervention

Abstract Purpose Globally, many children are exposed to violent discipline in multiple settings. Interventions to prevent violent discipline are therefore highly needed. In the present study, the feasibility of the intervention Interaction Competencies with Children – for Parents (ICC-P), an additional module of a school-based intervention for teachers, was tested. The intervention aims to prevent violent discipline by changing attitudes towards such method and fostering supportive adult-child interaction through non-violent interaction skills. Methods In total, 164 parents (Mage= 39.55, range = 24 70, 72.3% female) from four public secondary schools in Tanzania participated in a four-day training conducted by six trainers (Mage= 44.67, range = 40–47, 50% female). Using a One-Group Pre-Post design, we measured the feasibility and preliminary effectiveness of the intervention qualitatively and quantitatively. Parents were assessed via self-administered questionnaires before and six weeks after the intervention. Trainers rated the implementation of every workshop session. Results Based on descriptive statistics and Classical Content Analysis, implementing trainers and participants rated ICC-P as feasible. Participants indicated a high need for such interventions and showed high acceptance. They were able to integrate core aspects of the intervention in their daily interactions with children. Using t-tests, ICC-P proved to be preliminarily effective; parents reported applying less violent discipline and holding more critical attitudes about such measures after the intervention. Conclusion ICC-P is feasible intervention that showed initial signs of effectiveness. We recommend combining the parents’ training module with the teachers’ module to prevent violence in multiple settings.

How do question-answer exchanges among generations matter for children's happiness?

Intergenerational exchange plays an increasing role in realizing sustainable societies. Question-answer exchanges are the trigger for individuals to initiate some intergenerational relations, and the literature has established that inquisitiveness (curiosity about something and someone different) contributes to people's generativity and happiness. However, little is known about how children's inquisitiveness influences their generative concern and happiness. We claim that inquisitiveness is essential for children to enhance their happiness and hypothesize that those who receive a positive response from adults tend to be inquisitive and express the signs of generativity. To empirically examine the hypothesis, we have statistically characterized inquisitiveness in relation to adult-child interaction, generativity (offering care for people and the natural environment) and happiness, using the data from a survey of 511 Japanese children between 9 and 14 years and by applying the revised generativity concern scale (GCS-R). The results show that inquisitiveness correlates with generativity and happiness, primarily that a positive response by adults to children's inquiries promotes their inquisitiveness through adult-child interactions. Our analysis shows that children's inquisitiveness, encouraged by adults' positive responses, is more significant in happiness than the generativity concern during childhood. Overall, the results suggest that adults responding positively to children's questions is essential for promoting inquisitiveness and increasing happiness.

Guides or guidelines for interacting and playing with medical complex children: a qualitative documentary research.

to identify content on play and interaction with children with special health care needs recommended in clinical guidelines; analyze play and interaction activities applicable to children with special health care needs and complex care requirements. qualitative documentary research based on guides, protocols, or guidelines on playing and interacting with children with special and living with complex care. Search terms in English (guidelines, playing OR play, complex needs, OR chronic disease) and in Portuguese ( guia, brincar ou brincadeiras, condições crônicas ) on the first ten pages of_Google Search ® . Thematic analysis was applied to the information extracted from the documents. a total of nine documents with similar content were grouped into units of analysis, keeping only the interacting and playing activities applicable to children with special health care needs and living with complex care requirements, namely stimulation of potential, stimulation of adult-child interaction, and stimulation of the senses (touch, sight, and hearing), to be carried out by health professionals and family caregivers in the different care contexts. interaction and play are potential promoters of adult-child interaction, with application in the stimulating and life-delivering complex care for children.

Measuring Quality in Two Early Childhood Education Contexts: Centre-Based Childcare and Four-Year-Old Preschool

The quality of early childhood experiences is crucial to a child’s development and educational success. Yet few early childhood education and care services in the world today offer a consistently high level of educational quality. In particular, educational quality depends on the context’s characteristics. The aim of this study was therefore to measure and compare the educational quality experienced in two distinct educational contexts, located in Quebec: early childhood centres and 4-year-old preschools. Results of the study indicate that there are very few significant differences between these two educational contexts in terms of interaction quality and pedagogical orientations quality, while variables related to structural quality vary greatly. Correlational and regression analyses carried out separately on each educational context show that few variables are predictive of interaction quality levels, suggesting that other variables, notably related to pedagogical orientations quality, would better explain variations in adult-child interactions predictive of child development. These results have implications for initial training curriculum aimed towards adults working in early childcare and for future directions in research on educational quality, including rethinking the importance of pedagogical orientations and structures in the ecosystemic model of quality.

Empathic creativity in child–adult musical play

Despite considerable research on children’s development of prosocial behaviours through musical play and child–adult interactions, such literature tends to focus on how children’s behaviours or dispositions might be improved rather than recognizing the inherent dignity of the children or understanding how adults may also be influenced through such interactions. In this theoretical article we investigate processes of ‘empathic creativity’ to envision possible ways that children and adults might attune to one another as co-equal interactors through musical play. We reviewed literature related to empathic creativity, while considering ways to elucidate each process in terms of its implications for music teachers. To offer possible practical illustrations for empathic creativity, we connect each process to an instance of interactive musical play in the musical engagement between Lily, a 3-year-old Suzuki cello student; the first author; and the student’s parents. This article provides several illustrations of musical play that relate to empathic creativity, inviting further research into each of these elements as well as intersections between them. We also suggest further research into how adults might continue to develop their own social, emotional and musical skills while engaging in co-equal musical interactions with young children. Implications for practice include not underestimating children’s inherent musical and social capabilities, and the importance of music teachers attuning with students in ways that inspire them to learn along with students as they explore new musical ideas and approaches together.