Concurrent associations between maternal behaviours and infant communication within a cohort of women and their infants experiencing adversity

Abstract

Purpose: Evidence suggests that children living in adversity are at greater risk of poorer language than their peers with the quality of parental interactions potentially mediating this association. Studies typically measure the mediatory impact of generic interaction styles making it difficult to discern which particular aspects of the interaction are facilitating language. This study aims to bridge this gap by identifying specific maternal behaviours associated with concurrent infant communication, in a cohort of 12-month old infants and their mothers experiencing adversity.

Method: A total of 249 mother–infant free-play videos were collected from women experiencing adversity in Victoria and Tasmania, Australia. From those videos, specific maternal behaviours, infant communication acts and the interaction quality were coded.

Result: Maternal verbal imitations uniquely predicted concurrent use of infant vocalisations, total words and unique words. Furthermore, the more fluent and connected the mother–infant dyad, the stronger the association between imitations and all three infant measures.

Conclusion: Frequent use of maternal imitations, within highly connected mother–infant dyads, may help mediate the impact of adversity on early communication. This information is important for early years professionals working with at-risk populations in augmenting current knowledge of risk and protective factors related to early language.

Keywords:

• language development
• responsiveness
• parents

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge and express our gratitude to all the families and researchers involved in the right@home project. This project was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship and the NHMRC funded Centre of Research Excellence in Child Language (NHMRC Project Grant #1023493). All research at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute is supported by the Victorian Government’s Operational Infrastructure Support Program. S. Goldfeld is also supported by an NHMRC Career Development Scholarship (1082922). We would also like to express our particular thanks to the team at Georgia State University for supporting us with the implementation of the fluency and connectedness measure. Final acknowledgement to Dr Fiona Mensah and Dr Cristina McKean for their helpful advice and guidance.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writings of this article.