MOTHER-CHILD INTERACTIONS AND EARLY SOCIAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCIES

FADDA, ROBERTA;LUCARELLI, LOREDANA

2014-01-01

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Abstract

Introduction The relevance of the early mother-child interactions for the development of the infants’ social communication is well documented, either during feeding or playing (Stern, 1995, 1998; Biringen, 2000). However, little is known about the influence of these interactions on the infants’ socio-communicative abilities per sè, namely without their mother scaffolding. Method This study investigated, in 36 dyads, the relationship between mother-child interactions during feeding and playing, through the “Feeding Scale” (Chatoor et al., 1998; Ammaniti et al., 2006), and “Play Scale” (Chatoor et al., 1997), and socio-communicative abilities of young children in interaction with an unfamiliar adult in the course of a structured observation, through the “Early Social Communication Scales” (Mundy et al., 2003). The children, aged between 9 and 24 months (19M), all born at term, had a development within the typical range, and their mothers did not show psycho-pathological symptoms as indicated by the Psychiatric Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (Derogatis, 1994). Results The dyads were distinguished into dyads with functional interaction (62%) and dyads with transient interactional dysfunction (38%). The infants belonging to dyads with transient interactional dysfunction were significantly lower in Responding to Joint Attention (RJA) in interaction with an unfamiliar adult, compared to the infants belonging to dyads with functional interaction [t(33)= 2.073; p<.05]. Interactional Conflict during feeding, higher in the dyads with transient interactional dysfunction, was inversely correlated with the infants' socio-communicative competence of RJA in interaction with an unfamiliar adult (r=-0.340; p<.05). Moreover, RJA significantly predicted interdyadic differences (Exp B=0.972; S.E.=0.14; p< .05). Conclusions This study showed that the natural mother-child interactions may contribute to the development of the infant’s social communicative competencies in extra-dyadic interactions with an unfamiliar adult, especially at a receptive level. Due to the novelty of this research in the field, more studies are needed to further explore this phenomenon.