ATTENDING TO LEARN WHILE LEARNING TO ATTEND: RECIPROCAL RELATIONS BETWEEN INFANT ATTENTION AND CONTINGENT CONTINGENT INTERACTIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

Social contingency, or prompt and meaningful back-and-forth exchanges between infant and caregiver, is a powerful feature of the early language environment. Research suggests that infants with better attentional skills engage in more social contingency during interactions with adults and that adult contingent responding influences infant attention during the interaction. This dissertation examines reciprocal relations between infant attention and social contingency as well as the associations each have with infant language. This study utilizes secondary data from 106 participants collected as part of a longitudinal study of attention development run at Florida International University. Sustained attention (duration of looking) and attention shifting (speed of gaze-shifting) were assessed at 6 months and 12 months in social and nonsocial contexts with varying levels of distraction. Social contingency was assessed during toy play with a caregiver at 6 months and 12 months using fluency and connectedness. Child language was measured via caregiver-report and direct assessment at 18 months. Results indicated that attention shifting related more strongly to contingency at 6 months and sustained attention related more strongly at 12 months. Sustained attention to nonsocial stimuli and attention shifting towards social stimuli related most strongly to contingency. Attention and contingency each related to language independently. These findings suggest that attentional skills relate to both contingency and language. These relations shift over the first year of life, and the attentional skills that relate to contingency may not be the same as those that relate to language development broadly.