Mothers and Fathers in Playing-Teaching Task Situations: Do They Interact and Influence Infants' Language Development Differently?

Abstract

Infants develop and acquire basic language skills as they interact with their caregivers. As sensitive teachers, friendly playmates, or challenging partners, parents aid infants language development. As active participants, infants, in turn, learn, understand, and express various words and phrases. Therefore, parent-infant interaction is important in early language development in infancy. Most of the previous studies observed mother-infant interaction during free-play situation, and revealed that mothers responsiveness, didactic behaviors, and emotions aid infants language achievement. On the other hand, the study about father-infant interaction has not received attention until recently. Also, researchers have claimed that free-play situation is limited to represent parent-infant interaction as a whole. Therefore, the current study observed mother- and father-infant interaction during free-play and teaching-task situations to examine behavioral differences between mothers and fathers, and analyze unique relationship between mothers and fathers behaviors and infants language comprehension and production. Parent-infant interaction was observed when the infants were at 9 months, and the interactions were coded with Caregiver-Child Affect, Responsiveness, and Engagement Scale (C-CARES). Also, infants language comprehension and production were measured with MacArthur-Bates Communicative Inventory-Korean (M-B CDI-K) when infants were at 9 and 12 months of age. Results indicated that mothers and fathers displayed different behavioral patterns when interacting with their infants. Also, parents behaviors were different across free-play and teaching-task situations. In addition, significant parent x situation, parent x infant gender, and parent x situation x infant gender interaction effects were found. Moreover, different mothers and fathers behavioral variables were associated with infants language measures. Specifically, mothers disciplinary and negative verbalization and fathers teasing and task-oriented behavior continuously predicted infants language comprehension and production. Mothers behaviors can be explained as culture-specific behavioral pattern, and fathers behaviors can be explained as fathers unique contribution. Implications and limitations are further discussed.