Adult-child Interactions Research Articles

Interaction microanalysis of foster care research using THEME

Environmental stress is a key element to the understanding of the psychopathology of children in foster care. Such children often present a wide range of symptoms from anxiety to depression, including abnormal behaviors in their interactions with adults that can be related to experience suffered in their family of origin (e.g., abandonment, abuse, etc.). Foster care should provide a safe environment, both to protect children from abuse and to help them build a well-adjusted developmental trajectory. The relationships with the family of origin may also be maintained. How do children in foster care behave in relation to caregivers given the differences between the families they grow up in? This study focuses on three adult-child relationships: those with a foster carer, a mother and a father. Each adult-child interaction was recorded several times in a day-to-day environment. On each occasion the instruction was given to behave naturally while interacting with a child. No additional material was supplied. Our observations concern the verbal and non-verbal comportment of a 4-year-old foster child named Julia when entering the study, with her caregivers. Once the principal elements had been coded (behaviors, verbalizations), a sequential behavioral patterns analysis was performed using the THEME© program. For this purpose, a 2-min interaction was chosen from the third video of an event which appeared particularly representative of the relationship between Julia and her different caregivers. According to whom Julia was with, the results reveal very different interactive processes. We observe, for example, that with the foster carer the interaction patterns were primarily focused on play objects, whereas they involved more collaborative activity with the father and distraction/avoidance behaviors with the mother. The study identifies the use of disengaging and self-exciting behaviors in all types of interaction. Those emotion regulation strategies are particularly developed during parent-child sessions, showing pathological processes of relationship.

Impact of language-training programs on French educators’ interactions and child syntax development

Studies that measure the effectiveness of language-training program for children’s language development do not clearly identify in adult-child interaction which characteristics of educators’ language are most effective, particularly for children over 4 years of age who need to develop complex syntactic skills. Our study aimed to analyze the language use of 26 educators (with different professions: teachers, animators, and employees) participating in French language-training program for preschoolers. This training was based on linguistic research on language acquisition and focused on syntax. A total of 131 children were recorded in adult-child joint narration in a dyadic interaction across six French cities and 20 preschools. The statistical analysis of the linguistic and pragmatic properties of the educators’ language while interacting with children demonstrated that the educators changed their language practices after training. This study also revealed that syntax complexity of educators’ input has a significant impact on syntax development of children.

Grandparenting Role on Math Online Learning in Chinese Multigenerational Households

Under the COVID-19 pandemic, online learning has become m sore frequently used and has carried over cultural characteristics. In China, grandparents exert a great impact on parent–child relationships and on children’s online learning process. This study proposed six models and examined the roles of various Chinese family members (father, mother, grandparents) and their online accompaniment time in promoting preschoolers’ math learning. A total of 3552 participants were recruited to finish online questionnaires about demographics, household adult–child interactions, online company time investment, and math language performance. We found that the relationships between father time investment online and children’s math language performance were mediated by the amount of time that maternal grandparents spent with children on online learning. To contextualize these findings, we discussed the unique Chinese cultural aspects of the grandparent–parent–children relationship during the development of online math language performance in Chinese families.

The negotiation of epistemic and deontic rights in child-adult interactions in colloquial Jakartan Indonesian

Discourse markers can function to mark epistemic and deontic modality. This study aims to explore how children and adults apply the discourse marker deh to signal their epistemic and deontic rights. Previous studies only dealt with how the deontic aspect of deh is used in determining future actions. There is no discussion on how the speakers use epistemic and deontic rights in interactions even though both are interrelated. Furthermore, the previous studies only dealt with adults' language. The present study explores how epistemic and deontic rights are marked by children and adults with deh by conducting a discourse analysis. The data were obtained from the CHILDES (Child Language Data Exchange System). Speakers' neglect of information offered to them reveals that they instead make decisions based on the knowledge they get from their experiences. With this knowledge, the speakers make the message they deliver when they direct others' future actions. Deh reveals speakers' expectations that others will take an action based on the speakers' requests. While children still produce indirect arguments or even, they do not make any arguments, in some cases, adults directly provide arguments to support the claims of adults' deontic rights. Adults tend to talk about hypothetical events in the future in defending their ideas. It never happens in the case of children. The speakers of deh position themselves as the ones with higher epistemic and deontic rights. When the speakers manage future actions and the others do not agree with them, they do not insist that the recipients do what they ask. They realize that the recipients also have the right to decide. Ignoring others’ rights will harm their social relationships.

Retrospective Perceptions of Grooming in Same-Sex versus Opposite-Sex Child Sexual Abuse

ABSTRACT Research on child sexual abuse (CSA) has predominantly focused on opposite-sex (e.g., male adult-female child) adult-child pairs, neglecting same-sex (e.g., male adult-male child) adult-child pairs. Grooming behaviors are an early indicator of CSA and while it is important to recognize grooming to prevent abuse, research has shown that detecting these behaviors is a difficult task. Despite this difficulty, people retrospectively overestimate their ability to recognize abuse once it is clear that abuse has occurred. The current study investigated how outcome information (abuse did or did not occur) and the sex of the adult-child pair influenced perceptions of adult-child interactions. Participants evaluated vignettes depicting grooming and non-grooming behaviors in same-sex and opposite-sex adult-child conditions. Participants who were told CSA occurred provided higher likelihood ratings that abuse occurred than participants who were not given information about the abuse. There was some evidence that gender pairings influenced retrospective perceptions of these interactions.

Mothers’ and Fathers’ Parenting and Other Family Context Variables Linked to Developmental Outcomes in Young Children With Intellectual Disability: A Two-wave Longitudinal Study

Parenting is a key factor for the development of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Therefore, early intervention programs should target parenting behaviors to improve children’s developmental outcomes. The present study analyzed the effect of parental behaviors and other family factors on the cognitive and linguistic development of children with an intellectual disability (ID). Participants (n = 87, aged between 20 and 47 months) were recruited from several Spanish Early Intervention Centers. The children’s development was assessed with the Bayley Scales of Infant Development (BSID-III) on two occasions. Besides questionnaires including family factors, 10-min mother–child and father-child interactions during free play were auto-recorded at home. Intensive statistical modeling on the two measurement occasions was used to select relevant predictors as well as their interactions. Child cognitive development models, including predictors such as mother’s responsiveness and affection and father’s teaching, had a predictive capacity between 22 and 26%. The language development models, including the mother’s responsiveness and father’s teaching scores amongst other predictors, yielded adjusted-R2s between 26 and 28%. This study’s findings evidence that parental behaviors during adult–child interaction affect the development of children with intellectual disabilities. The study also provides data that can be used to guide early intervention.

Experimenter identity: An invisible, lurking variable in developmental research

AbstractDevelopmental researchers are well aware that children behave differently around different people. Nevertheless, researchers rarely consider (and report on) who is running their studies. Indeed, in a survey of articles published in the last 3 years in 4 top developmental journals, we find that the vast majority of studies fail to report any information about experimenter identity, despite the fact that child–adult interactions may be strongly influenced by the social inferences that individuals draw from one another. We argue that developmental researchers need to acknowledge how experimenter identity could be acting as an invisible, lurking variable, influencing the outcome and generalizability of studies. We provide simple suggestions for how researchers and journals can begin to address this issue, thereby improving the quality and depth of the work in our field.

Guiding Children to Respond: Prioritizing Children’s Participation Over Interaction Progression

ABSTRACT When adults select young children to answer questions, children’s delays and troubles in responding may lead to a tension between child participation and the preference for progressivity that normally applies to conversations among adults. Drawing on everyday adult-child conversational data, this study focuses on question-answer sequences in which the selected child does not respond in a timely or adequate manner and examines how co-present, nonselected adults balance between progressivity and the need to facilitate child participation. The analysis shows that adults tend to manage this balance by prioritizing child participation over progressivity, thereby socializing children to achieve interactional autonomy. This ordering of preferences in adult-child interaction is in contrast with previous findings in adult conversation. This study provides empirical evidence of the ways adults prioritize child participation and socialize children into active responsive participation in conversation. Data are in Mandarin and English.

Spatial language during a household task with bilingual Latine families

Children's exposure to everyday math talk contributes positively to their early math development, yet little is known about family everyday math in culturally and linguistically diverse communities. The present study described the spatial language used by 75 low-income, bilingual, Latine caregivers as they taught their preschoolers to set a table for a birthday party. Forty percent of caregivers' content-rich utterances contained math references, half of which were spatial terms. “Where” spatial references were the most frequent and used to provide instructions. Analyses comparing Spanish and English interactions showed variations in spatial language types and manners of use, as well as in the relation between adult and child math talk. Results underscore the need to build foundational knowledge in early math with culturally and linguistically diverse families, and to encompass a wide range of everyday adult-child interactions, in an effort to forge equitable STEM initiatives and practices.

Parenting interventions to support parent/child attachment and psychosocial adjustment in foster and adoptive parents and children: A systematic review.

Parenting interventions to support parent/child attachment and psychosocial adjustment in foster and adoptive parents and children: A systematic review.

Preparedness of senior preschool children with mental retardation to learn ball games

Introduction. Ball games, being a unique motor activity, combine the opportunities for favourable psychomotor, social and personal development of children. According to World Health Organisation experts, the value of ball games as a means and form of physical activity lies in the fact that they improve cognitive abilities and physical fitness of children with intellectual disabilities and hyperkinetic behaviour / hyperactivity syndrome. However, in order to achieve effective results in teaching ball games to children with disabilities, their level of physical fitness and functional abilities needs to be taken into account. The aim of the study was to examine and assess the level of readiness of senior preschool children with mental retardation to learn ball games, with further comparison of the findings with survey results in respect of children without developmental disabilities. Materials and methods. The research involved two groups of senior preschool children attending preschool institutions of Belgorod (Russian Federation). The diagnostic ball game exercises recommended in the programme “Play to your heart’s content”, as well as the methods of mathematical statistics (Student’s t-test), were used. Results. Talking of preschool children’s readiness to master ball games, we mean a well-formed orientative framework of motor actions with a ball in the form of knowledge and ideas about the motor task, mastering the ways to effectuate these actions, motivation towards achieving the result. The obtained data confirmed that children with mental retardation have insufficient readiness to master ball games and exercises. The optimal and average level of readiness to master ball games and exercises is recorded in 54.83% of children with mental retardation and in 80.64% of children without developmental disabilities. A total of 45.16% of children with mental retardation and 19.35% of children without developmental disabilities have problems of visuomotor coordination, attention development, low control and regulation of own actions, low level of coordinating a motor act with external environment. The processing of the obtained results shows statistical reliability of differences (p<0.05) in average indicator values (score) in game exercise performance within the modules “Football” and “Basketball” between children with mental retardation and children without developmental disabilities. Conclusion. The data obtained on the level of readiness of preschool children with mental retardation to master ball games testify to the need to identify due goals and content of individual assignments towards overcoming existing problems, the feasibility of organising child-adult interaction aimed at conveying and mastering motor experience.

Children on the move: Guided participation in travel activities

The present article explores how children appropriate travel competence. The data material consists of 12 h of video recordings of five families prior to journeys where children travel by public transport without a known adult. Through analyses of adult-child interactions in an airport and a train station, we show how children become positioned and act as learners in busy and semiotically complex public spaces. Situated activities such as finding an airport gate and planning an upcoming train change became learning activities in which adults guided children in identifying, understanding and acting upon travel information. We show how adults highlight features in the environment as relevant for the task at hand, and in cooperation with children establish and sustain a joint focus of attention. The activities were organised as collaborative tasks that enabled children to develop and display competence in using such sources of information as signs, tickets and audible messages, and to identify and solve emerging problems.

Multiactivity in adult-child interaction: accounts resolving conflicting courses of action in request sequences

Abstract This paper studies adults’ responses to children’s requests by focusing on turns that account for not granting the request on the grounds of involvement in another activity, i.e., multiactivity. The data consist of everyday interactions among family members at homes and in cars. The collection – 17 request sequences – is analysed with the conversation analytic method. We show the following: first, account turns verbalise either the ongoing or the requested activity, or both; second, account turns are a practice for foregrounding and communicating “exclusive order”, i.e., they indicate that two progressing activities intersect with each other and cannot be progressed simultaneously, and that one activity is prioritised over another; third, account turns are used either to suspend or abandon the course of action initiated by the request; fourth, accounts – through various sequential and turn design features – display adults’ level of commitment to resuming and returning to the requested activity later; and, finally, accounts indicating high commitment negotiate the “sequential implicativenesses” of the intersecting courses of action, displaying orientation to progress initiated activities. Accounts that display partial or no commitment frame the prioritisation of an activity in terms of “incapability” or “unwillingness” to progress the request sequence and thereby construct the “limits of multiactivity” in situ.

Hypotheses in adult-child interactions stimulate children's reasoning and verbalizations

Adult-child interactions can support children's development and are established as predictors of program quality in early childhood settings. However, the linguistic components that constitute positive interactions have not yet been studied in detail. This study investigates the effects of hypotheses proposed by adults on children's responses in a dyadic picture-book viewing situation. In 2 experiments, adults’ use of hypotheses (e.g., “Maybe this is a dwarf's door”) was tested against the use of instructive statements (“This is a dwarf's door”) and in combination with open questions (“What do you think, why is the door so small?”). In Experiment 1, hypotheses differed from instructions only by the modal marker “maybe”. Children's responses to hypotheses were longer and contained more self-generated explanations as compared to responses to instructions. The use of hypotheses also seemed to encourage children to attach more importance to their own explanations. In Experiment 2, combining hypotheses with open-ended why questions elicited longer responses but no more self-generated explanations in children than open-ended questions alone. Results indicate that subtle differences in adults’ utterances can directly influence children's reasoning and children's contributions to dialogues.

Assessing Quality in Classrooms that Blend State Pre-Kindergarten and Head Start Funding: The Case of Michigan

ABSTRACT Research Findings: In recent years, several initiatives have been put into place both federally and state-wide to expand access to high-quality early education programs. At the center of these efforts are the tools that measure program or classroom quality. The present study compares the psychometrics of two such tools used in Michigan, the Preschool Program Quality Assessment (PQA) used by state-funded preschools, and the Classroom Assessment Scoring System, Pre-K (CLASS) required for Head Start, to inform state-level policies that prevent excessive assessment stipulations for blended programs. Pairs of PQA and CLASS scores were obtained from 389 classrooms. Alphas were reliable to very reliable for both instruments. For Preschool PQA, the alpha ranged from 0.71 (Curriculum planning and assessment) to 0.88 (Adult-child interactions). For CLASS Pre-K, alpha ranged from .74 (Emotional Support) to .91 (Instructional Support). The overall Preschool PQA scores and the Instructional Support domain of CLASS Pre-K were the most highly correlated; however correlations were moderate (r(389) = .29, p < .001). Practice or Policy: This study provides policy implications for redesigning and broadening states’ definitions of “quality” early care and learning programs, reexamining early learning standards, and streamlining efforts while maximizing children’s high-quality early experiences.

The multimodality of infant's rhythmic movements as a modulator of the interaction with their caregivers

Children’s rhythmic movements during the first year of life possess a meaningful predictive validity for later communicative development. However, their role within adult-child interactions is still underexplored. In this study, we examined whether children’s rhythmic movements were significantly responded by adults and the role of multimodality and object use in this process. We observed 22 dyads of 9-month-olds and their parents in natural play interactions. Infants’ multimodal rhythmic movements increased the probability of adult responding. Adults offered different types of responses and significantly followed the child’s focus of attention. These dynamics could support communicative development by promoting joint attention frameworks.

Further Developments in the Panel of Psychological Inquiry Method of Case Study Research: The Case of "Ronan"

In 2011 our research group published a pilot study—the Case of "Anna"—employing the Panel of Psychological Inquiry (PPI) Clinical Case Study Method. The present study—the Case of "Ronan"—is a second example of the PPI method in action. The Case of Ronan has a number of modifications in method compared to the Case of Anna. First, the Case of Ronan involves the evaluation of a more complex and controversial written case study of a 20-month old boy who was diagnosed with moderate to severe autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and who was treated in a comprehensive therapeutic daycare center program where the core approach was based upon Greenspan’s (2009) "Developmental, Individual-differences, Relationship-based" ("DIR"/ "Floortime") model. DIR/Floortime was originally developed for use by parents in their own homes, and the Case of Ronan demonstrates how a therapeutic pre-school environment can use DIR/Floortime as a model for most adult-child interactions in a pre-school therapeutic environment. In addition to the application of the PPI model to a radically different clinical diagnosis, there were modifications to the methodology itself including: (a) reduction in the number of judges from five to three; (b) having a key witness in the case testify remotely before the Panel; (c) the writing of a much more detailed judges’ opinion on the aspects of the case that most influenced their decisions; and (d) a further development of the logic of a quasi-judicial approach to clinical case studies in psychology. By examining how the civil law’s basic framework for proving causality in cases of personal injury (who did what harm to whom), the process by which knowledge claims that emerge out of clinical practice (who provided what benefit to whom) is further explicated.

I'm not a little kid anymore! Reciprocal social influence in child-adult interaction.

Human decisions are often influenced by others' opinions. This process is regulated by social norms: for instance, we tend to reciprocate the consideration received from others, independently of their reliability as information sources. Nonetheless, no study to date has investigated whether and how reciprocity modulates social influence in child–adult interaction. We tested 6-, 8- and 10-year-old children in a novel joint perceptual task. A child and an adult experimenter made perceptual estimates and then took turns in making a final decision, choosing between their own and partner's response. We manipulated the final choices of the adult partner, who in one condition chose often the child's estimates, whereas in another condition tended to confirm her own response. Results reveal that 10-year-old children reciprocated the consideration received from the partner, increasing their level of conformity to the adult's judgements when the partner had shown high consideration towards them. At the same time, 10-year-old children employed more elaborate decision criteria in choosing when trusting the adult partner compared to younger children and did not show egocentric biases in their final decisions. Our results shed light on the development of the cognitive and normative mechanisms modulating reciprocal social influence in child–adult interaction.

Early collaborations

AbstractThe present study examines the development of ‘but’-introduced clauses in adult-toddler conversations, distinguishing between autonomous productions (I wanna staybutwe need to go) and adult-child co-constructed uses (Adult:we’re going home, Child:butI wanna stay). Analyses covered all adult and childaval‘but’ uses in three longitudinal Hebrew corpora (age-range: 1;5–3;3), showing that: (1) both adults and children mostly useaval‘but’ in co-construction rather than autonomously; (2) adults begin co-constructing ‘but’-clauses with children months before the children start using ‘but’, mostly by elaborating on single-word child productions before adding the ‘but’-clause (Child:cup, Adult:that’s a cup, butyou don’t like juice); (3) as children start combining more clauses, adults gradually conjoin more ‘but’-clauses directly with the children’s productions, without elaboration (Child:let’s go. Adult:butfirst put on your shoes). These patterns suggest that the main function of ‘but’-clauses in adult-child discourse is co-constructing ideas contributed by two (or more) interlocutors. Such co-constructions are initially scaffolded by the adults, until the children are able to contribute full-fledged propositions to co-constructions. These findings provide further evidence of the role of adult-child interaction in introducing and familiarizing children with new linguistic structures, and advancing their developing grammar.

Visitor access, use, and desired improvements in urban parks

Urban parks can provide many physical and psychological health benefits, but these may not be shared equitably among visitors. The purpose of this study was to explore park visitor demographics and activities, as well as their in-depth narratives regarding experiences, perceptions of accessibility, and desired improvements in a range of urban park types, using Portland, Oregon as a case study. We used a mixed-methods approach to interview and observe visitors in 15 urban parks of three general park types: recreational-active use, natural-passive use, and multi-use parks. The most common activities were physical recreation, interactions between adults, and adult-child interactions, which all support physical and mental well-being. Ninety-four percent of observed children were engaged in physical recreation and three-fourths were interacting with other children. Our non-metric multidimensional scaling ordinations with joint plots indicated some trends in visitor demographics and activities across park types, but we found no significant differences in the total number of observed visitors, females and males, racial-ethnic groups, or adults and children across park types. Our complementary in-depth, semi-structured interviews with participants revealed specific motivations for park visitation, access concerns, and desired improvements. Visitation was primarily motivated by physical recreation opportunities, accessibility, and children, whereas the main access concerns were park proximity, trails and paths, and maintenance. Feelings of safety were particularly important for female visitors, while a sense of community helped to create a welcoming atmosphere for visitors with underrepresented racial-ethnic backgrounds. Participants across demographics groups discussed preferences for improvements, which focused on enhancing various park amenities and social atmosphere. Only 19 % of participants indicated that no changes were needed in the parks. We provide strategies for urban park planners, governmental agencies, and community groups to continue enhancing urban park experiences and accessibility for diverse visitors.