Mother-Infant Contingent Vocalizations in 11 Countries

Abstract

Mother-infant vocal interactions serve multiple functions in child development, but the community-common or community-specific nature of key features of their vocal interactions remains unclear. Here we examined rates, interrelations, and contingencies of vocal interactions in 684 mothers and their 5-month-old infants in diverse communities in 11 countries (Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Cameroon, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, South Korea, and United States). Rates of mothers’ and infants’ vocalizations varied widely across communities and were uncorrelated. However, collapsing across communities mothers vocalized to infants contingent on the offset of their infants’ nondistress vocalizing, infants vocalized contingent on the offset of their mothers’ vocalizing, and maternal and infant contingencies were significantly correlated, pointing to the beginnings of dyadic conversational turn taking. Despite broad differences in the overall talkativeness of mothers and infants, maternal and infant contingent vocal responsiveness is common across communities, supporting essential functions of turn-taking in early child socialization.

Becoming a Communicative Partner: Infant Contingent Responsiveness to Maternal Language and Gestures

“…Although there were cultural differences in the base rates (i.e., frequencies) of language and gestures by ethnicity, our findings illustrate generalization of contingency patterns across infants from Mexican, Dominican, and African American backgrounds, which aligns with evidence that parents from different cultural communities uniformly display contingency in their responses to infants (Bornstein et al., ; Keller, ; Tamis‐LeMonda et al., ). Generalizability was seen in the timing, specificity, and reciprocity of infants’ responses to mothers’ behaviors.…”

“…Alternatively, infants across the three ethnic groups might display the same pattern of responsiveness and specificity in their contingent responding. When contingent vocalizations were examined in 11 countries (Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Cameroon, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, South Korea, and the United States), consistency was seen across cultures: Mothers and infants did not differ on their patterns of contingency, despite mean level differences in vocalizing (Bornstein et al., ).…”

Socially contingent responsivity: finding a link between statistical learning and understanding the referential nature of words

“…In most cases, the time window between infants' and adults' behaviors was chosen to be 1 second as a criterion of contingency (Bigelow, 1996;Bigelow & Rochat, 2006;Bigelow & Power, 2014;Kochanska & Aksan, 2004;Lohaus et al, 2005). In a number of experiments, the time window was longer: 2 seconds (Mcquaid et al, 2009;Bornstein et al, 2015;Gros-Louis, West, & King, 2014) or 5 seconds (Baumwell, Tamis-LeMonda, & Bornstein, 1997;45 Olson, Bates, & Bayles, 1984) following infants' actions. In some cases, the time window used as a criterion of contingency was not specified (Goldstein, King, & West, 2003;Bornstein & Tamis-LeMonda, 1989).…”

“…Such behaviors included smiles and vocalizations (Bigelow & Rochat, 2006;Mcquaid et al, 2009;Bornstein et al, 2015), where vocalizations sometimes were restricted to non-distress (Bigelow & Power, 2014) or positive (Kochanska & Aksan, 2004) and directed at objects or interlocutors (Baumwell, Tamis-LeMonda, & Bornstein, 1997;Gros-Louis, West, & King, 2014).…”

“…In some studies, such behaviors included smiles, vocalizations and facial expressions (Bigelow, 1996;Bigelow & Rochat, 2006;Bigelow & Power, 2014;Mcquaid et al, 2009;Bornstein et al, 2015). Other studies also included verbal acknowledgements or directives, moves towards infants and touches, and verbal imitations (Bornstein & Tamis-LeMonda, 1989;Baumwell, Tamis-LeMonda, & Bornstein, 1997;Goldstein, King, & West, 2003;Kochanska & Aksan, 2004;Lohaus et al, 2005;Gros-Louis, West, & King, 2014).…”