How infant‐directed actions enhance infants’ attention, learning, and exploration: Evidence from EEG and computational modeling

Abstract

Author ContributionsMM, JEvS and SH jointly developed the study concept and design. MM and JEvS collected the data. MM and JEvS performed EEG data analyses, and MM and FP performed computational modelling analyses.

Endogenous oscillatory rhythms and interactive contingencies jointly influence infant attention during early infant-caregiver interaction

“…In future work it will be important to take a more holistic, computational and multi-modal approach to studying how factors intrinsic to the infant, and the inter-personal behavioural contingencies of the dyad, structure infant attention and behaviour 77 . For example, studying how inter-related multi-modal patterns of caregiver behaviour, such as body movement 70 , facial affect 24,78 and vocalisations 26 support infants’ engagement in joint attention, will build on the work that we reported here. In addition to the micro-dynamic analyses that we present here, it will also be important for future work to employ modelling approaches to further investigate infants’ neural entrainment to the unidirectional and inter-dyadic action-generated contingencies of shared interaction 79,80 .…”

“…Instead, caregivers are anticipating shifts in infant attention, and, in line with an allostatic model of inter-personal interaction, ‘catching’ infants’ attention, and monitoring their behaviour 2 . This increase in the rate of caregiver behaviour after look onsets to objects could reflect dynamic up-regulatory processes that serve to maintain infant attention: though not reflected in their vocalisations; other fast-changing salient cues such as hand movements and facial affect could also increase in variability 70 . The down-regulation of caregiver attention over the course of longer attention episodes to objects by the infant might subsequently index decoupling of caregivers’ regulatory processes from infant attention; this is also reflected in the decreased rate of change in caregiver F0 (Fig.6f).…”

“It's not just what we say or do, but how we say and do it”

“…Studies on the biological underpinnings of IDA are almost non-existent. We found only two studies on this topic (Kosie, 2019;Meyer et al, 2023), but both studies suggest that IDA may trigger different biological processing patterns than ADA.…”

“…The importance of these modifications for child development has been systematically confirmed. Such specific and specially adapted behaviours contribute to an infant's attentiveness and increased affective responsiveness (Brand & Shallcross, 2008;Fernald, 1985;Fernald & Kuhl, 1987;Kosie, 2019;Koterba & Iverson, 2009;Meyer et al, 2023;Santesso et al, 2007;Sulpizio et al, 2018;Werker & McLeod, 1989), regulation of an infant's own interaction behaviours (Papoušek et al, 1990), and establishment of emotional bonds. They also help infants understand the communicative intentions of adults (Fernald, 1989;Sirri et al, 2020) and how to take turns in conversations (Arias & Peña, 2016;Kalashnikova & Kember, 2020).…”

Infant-Directed Communication: Examining the many dimensions of everyday caregiver-infant interactions

“…Infants prefer to look at infant-directed over adult-directed action, and they are more likely to imitate and explore objects that have been demonstrated using these infant-directed features (Brand & Shallcross, 2008;Koterba & Iverson, 2009;Meyer et al, 2022;Williamson & Brand, 2014). Further, caregivers frequently manipulate objects as they simultaneously make a verbal reference to that same object (Gogate et al, 2000;Messer, 1978), suggesting that caregivers may use action to reinforce their speech.…”