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. 2015 Aug:40:139-50.
doi: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2015.05.004. Epub 2015 Jul 9.

Infants' behavioral styles in joint attention situations and parents' socio-economic status

Monika Abels  1 , Ted Hutman  2
Affiliations

Infants' behavioral styles in joint attention situations and parents' socio-economic status

Monika Abels et al. Infant Behav Dev. 2015 Aug.

Abstract

In this study the eco-cultural model of parenting (Keller, H. (2007). Cultures of infancy. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum) was applied to the study of joint attention behavior of children from families with different socio-economic status (SES). It was hypothesized that infants' early communication styles would differ with SES reflecting more independent or interdependent interactions with their caregivers. It was also hypothesized that infants would use the same types of behaviors whether they have declarative or imperative communication goals. The Early Social Communication Scales (ESCS, Mundy et al., 2003) was administered to 103 typically developing infants of 12 months (approximately half of them siblings of children with autism). A factor analysis, yielding four behavioral factors, namely pointing, eye contact, actions and following points, confirmed the hypothesis that infants use behaviors consistently across situations independent of their communicative intent. MANOVAs (comprising parental education and income) revealed that higher SES infants showed actions more frequently in the ESCS whereas lower SES infants followed experimenter's points more frequently. The results are discussed in the context of presumably differing socialization goals for infants and the divergent contribution of parental education and income that seem to have additive contribution to some factors (actions, following points) but divergent contributions to others (pointing, eye contact).

Keywords: 1-Year-olds; Communicative intent; Early Social Communication Scales (ESCS); Eco-cultural model of parenting; Joint attention.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Boxplot: Difference in actions and following points among SES groups
Figure 2
Figure 2
Infants’ pointing: Interaction effect between maternal education and family income
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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