Basic aspects of infant–grandparent ‘interaction’: an eight‐month longitudinal and naturalistic study

Abstract

This longitudinal and naturalistic study aims to describe basic aspects of early imitative exchanges in dyadic infant–grandfather and infant–grandmother free interactions, from the second to the 10th month of age. Sixteen infants were video‐recorded at home in the course of spontaneous dyadic interactions with maternal grandfathers and grandmothers; imitative interaction was characterised during off‐line analysis of video‐recordings. During interaction of infants with grandfathers and grandmothers, there was similarity in: (1) the frequency and the rate of imitation; (2) the structure of imitation, the number of turn‐takings and the kind of co‐actions; (3) the kind of imitated acts, totally and separately, the kind of imitated body movements, non‐speech sounds, facial expressions and combinations; and (4) the temporal patterns of the components of turn‐taking imitation. Differences were found for: (1) the direction of imitation, and (2) the linguistic nature of vocal imitations. Both grandfathers and grandmothers offer infants a sense of partner stability with similar and predictable actions and interactions – as evidenced by the similarities, as well as a variety of challenging communications – evidenced by the differences. It is assumed that grandfathers are as capable and sensitive as imitators and communicative partners as are grandmothers and parents.

Keywords:

• imitation
• infancy
• grandfather
• grandmother
• care‐giving

Acknowledgements

The present study is based on data derived from the PhD of the first author under the supervision of professor Giannis Kugiumutzakis. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of professor Giannis Kugiumutzakis for his invaluable advice and associate professor Giasemi Sarafidou for the statistical analysis. Above all, we are deeply indebted to the infants and the grandparents for offering their time, cooperation and patience to participate in the study.