Adults' interpretation of infants' acts.

Abstract

Adults are often viewed as skilled interpreters who understand infants' acts even when they are unconventional and diffuse. The first step in interpretation-the selection of acts from the stream of behavior-is examined here. One hundred forty adults (mothers and fathers and other men and women) viewed videotapes of 9-, 15-, and 21 -month-old infants. One half of the subjects were asked to note times when they thought the baby performed a meaningful act; the other half of the subjects were asked to note an intentionally communicative act. Times were recorded by a microcomputer. Parents selected more meaningful acts than nonparents and agreed more about selection of all acts. All subjects agreed more about intentionally communicative than about meaningful acts, at least for older infants.We wish to thank the National Science Foundation (Grants BNS-8012068 and BNS-83OO716) for their support.

Parent Perceptions of Communication Behaviors at Formally Assessed Stage Transitions in Young Children at Risk for Being Nonspeaking

“…Although children may not be producing new signals, the modification of old behaviors in familiar contexts may be the means by which parents are able to recognize the transition to intentional behavior. This finding is consistent with those of previous researchers (Adamson et al, 1987), who discovered that consensual communication depends not only on the child's behavior but also on the interpretive skill of the social partner. For very early communicators with limited repertoires of signals and limited ex- perience in their use, understanding the function of signals may indeed occur before production of many new communicative signals.…”

Maternal interpretations of infant intentionality: Changes over the course of infant development

“…Future empirical investigations could treat this relation as a hypothesis warranting testing. In that regard, the methodology employed in this study, as well as that used in other recent work also attempting to assess observer judgments in a more direct fashion (Adamson, Bakeman, Smith & Walters, 1987;Beaumont & Bloom, 1993;Kamel, 1993), could be particularly useful.…”

Early communication in dyads with visual impairment

“…Such a finding could reflect a lack of re-enforcement of facial orientation as an attention marker for visually impaired mothers and infants. Adamson et al (1987) commented that maternal feedback and appropriate responses to particular infant behaviours was essential as it allowed infants to gain an understanding of the effectiveness of particular behaviours (Adamson et al, 1987). If visually impaired infants get no positive feedback or re-enforcement when they use facial orientation, from their visually impaired mothers, then presumably they will stop using facial orientation as an attention marker.…”