Touch and Gaze in Parent Infant Social Play

Twenty first-born infants age three to five months, nine males and eleven females, were observed and videotaped for five minutes with each parent, in order to explore touch and gaze in free-play parent-infant interactions. Gazing behaviors of parents and infants and mutual gazing were measured in vivo; touching behaviors were measured from the videotapes of each dyad. For each behavior, four measures were taken: percent of total time, average rate per minute, mean duration of the behavior, and mean duration of the intervals between behaviors. The results show that, on the average, parent touch and gaze were typical of parents at play with infants: frequent short touches and frequent long gazes. The infants look back at parents much less often, typical of infants whose parents are trying to get their attention. The data show unique response patterns depending on the sex of the infant and parent. Both mothers and fathers use touch with boys, but not girls, as an instrumental attention getting technique , touching more when the infant looks less often. Mothers show a more complex response than fathers, probably learned from their greater caretaking experience. Touching to girls is related only to the parent\u27s own attention, seeming to be a more expressive response. Mothers, but not fathers, increase their ix gaze reciprocally with girls \u27 gaze but not toys\u27. These unique relationships for mothers and fathers with sons and daughters nay be the beginnings of differential sex-typed socialization. Mothers and fathers of the sane infants show very different behaviors, often negatively correlated, indicating that they may have developed complementary relationships with their infants

Father Involvement in Early Head Start Research Programs

This study examined fathers\u27 participation in Early Head Start programs using quantitative and qualitative data from 326 Early Head Start fathers when children were 36 months of age. About half (49%) of the fathers were involved in at least one program activity. A quarter (26%) of the fathers participated at a higher level, in two or more types of program activities. Fathers participated in parent education programs (17%), group socializations (15%), father-only activities (6%), policy councils and program committees (9%), home visits (32% ever, 17% monthly), and in dropping children off at the Early Head Start center (24% ever, 12% nine times or more). In multivariate analyses, at least one level of involvement was predicted by maternal engagement in the program and maturity of the father involvement program. Higher level involvement in the program was predicted by the father being African American/Black or Hispanic, maternal engagement in the program, and maturity of the father involvement program. Bivariate analyses showed that fathers in predominantly homebased programs who participated in frequent home visits were more often married, non-English speaking, and in families where both mothers and fathers had lower than typical levels of education. Fathers in predominantly center-based programs who frequently dropped off the Early Head Start child at the center were more often men of color, fathers of girls, and partnered with an employed mother or a mother rated as engaged in the Early Head Start program. Qualitative analyses underscore the potential for father program participation in mature programs and among policy-relevant groups

Building Blocks: Project Based Learning in Human Development Research

Collaborative human development (HD) research projects can provide numerous benefits for students and faculty mentors. HD research opportunities for students are often limited to existing funded projects that may not meet individual student interests. Creating HD research projects that incorporate both student and faculty interests is mutually beneficial but poses unique challenges. HD research often requires complex observational methods, specific content knowledge, and interpersonal skills to work with families and children. Project-based learning (PBL) can provide a low-cost framework for students and faculty to align interests while helping students develop proficiency in human development research. PBL structures learning through the process of finding solutions to complicated questions (Jones, Rasmussen, & Moffitt, 1997). PBL is often used in engineering, business, and teacher training, but rarely in educating developmental researchers. This experience provides an active, \u27first hand feel\u27 to project development and illustrates the effectiveness of the PBL model in developing human development research. This apprenticeship model case study offers two rounds of qualitative, descriptive data to illustrate the experiences of an undergraduate student, several graduate students, and faculty involvement in a group-based PBL research project. Students and the faculty mentor answered questions regarding the challenges and benefits of participating in a PBL research project and the use of a PBL project for mentoring graduate students. Results from this case study indicate that PBL participation can be a beneficial academic experience. Specifically, students learned about the logistics and details of planning a research project from the beginning while learning to collaborate with and mentor each other. Results suggest that students and faculty within the HD field can collaborate in meaningful ways that provide mutual benefit and bring diverse strengths to a project that meets multiple learning, teaching, research, and service goals

Encouraging Communication and Community Through Making Books About Shared Experiences

Classroom Storytelling to Enhance Language and Literacy Skills (C-SHELLS) is a guide for helping preschool children “write” books. C-SHELLS is designed to promote communication by using storytelling and book making activities to promote child language and literacy skills and community by helping culturally and linguistically diverse children engage with peers, understand classroom routines, and develop socially appropriate and regulated behaviors. C-SHELLS helps teachers engage children, get them talking, help them make friends, and increase their school readiness. C-SHELLS activities do this by helping children work together to make picture books based on shared classroom experiences. C-SHELLS uses a simple, fun, and engaging approach. In our previous work, parents receiving home visits have used this approach to improve the language skills of children who are English language learners and children who have language delays or related disabilities. Preschool teachers can use this approach with children in their classrooms. C-SHELLS incorporates evidence-based practices that promote children’s language, literacy, and social development. C-SHELLS activities are designed to build preschool children’s communication and behavioral skills within their preschool community. As children learn to organize and talk about experiences, they are learning skills important for later reading and understanding what is read. The C-SHELLS process for creating books is straightforward, and many preschool teachers have made books with young children. However, the benefit of making books depends on children’s engagement, conversation, and participation. A 3-part process is recommended. First, share experiences by encouraging children’s conversation about and interest in an activity. Second, make books by writing down what children say about photos or drawings of the shared experience and organizing words and pictures into a book. Finally, use the books by reading and talking about the books together again and again

Family Participation and Involvement in Early Head Start Home Visiting Services: Relations with Longitudinal Outcomes Executive Summary

Home visiting is an intervention approach used widely to provide individualized services to families living in poverty and children facing risks for poor development. Home visiting programs are often, by design, an indirect means to promote healthy child development and employ a variety of strategies ranging from checking child health and safety to encouraging positive parenting to helping parents access education and employment opportunities. Most home visiting programs, however, state that promoting child development is their overarching goal. Most home visitors work with parents to facilitate “developmental parenting,” a term introduced by Roggman, Boyce, and Innocenti (2008) to describe healthy parent-child interactions likely to support positive outcomes for their children. Promoting developmental parenting captures the overall approach of Early Head Start (EHS) home-based programs (Administration on Children and Families, 2002), the focus of this report

Integrating the little talks intervention into Early Head Start: An experimental examination of implementation supports involving fidelity monitoring and performance feedback

Enriching home visiting services by incorporating scientifically-supported interventions is a means for improving their effectiveness in promoting child development. However, deliberate efforts to ensure that home visitors are fully knowledgeable and supported to implement interventions with parents of young children are necessary. In this experimental study, a randomly-assigned group of Early Head Start home visitors monitored the fidelity of their provision of a scientifically-based intervention, Little Talks, and the program\u27s general child development services. On a bi-weekly basis, home visitors received performance feedback specific to their implementation of Little Talks and based upon the fidelity data. Findings demonstrated that home visitors showed immediate and consistent mastery of the Little Talks content, while the quality of their implementation, including their clinical decision-making and collaborative processes, improved to adequate levels over time. The Little Talks home visitors showed generalized improvements in their ability to obtain Parent Input while providing the program\u27s typical child development services were detected. In fact, Little Talks home visitors\u27 were superior in obtaining Parent Input relative to comparison home visitors. Further, parents for whom low-quality intervention implementation was observed discontinued their enrollment in home visiting prematurely, while high-quality implementation was associated with sustained enrollment. Limitations for this study are identified, leading to future directions for advancing home visitors\u27 incorporation of evidence-based practices

Sexual Selection, Physical Attractiveness, and Facial Neoteny: Cross-cultural Evidence and Implications [and Comments and Reply]

Physical attractiveness and its relation to the theory of sexual selection deserve renewed attention from cultural and biological anthropologists. This paper focuses on an anomaly associated with physical attractiveness-in our species, in contrast to many others, males seem to be more concerned than females with the attractiveness of potential sexual partners, perhaps because humans show far more age-related variance in female than in male fecundity. The resulting selection for male attraction to markers of female youth may lead incidentally to attraction to females displaying age-related cues in an exaggerated form. This paper reports cross-cultural evidence that males in five populations (Brazilians, U.S. Americans, Russians, Ache, and Hiwi) show an attraction to females with neotenous facial proportions (a combination of large eyes, small noses, and full lips) even after female age is controlled for. Two further studies show that female models have neotenous cephalofacial proportions relative to U.S. undergraduates and that drawings of faces artificially transformed to make them more or less neotenous are perceived as correspondingly more or less attractive. These results suggest several further lines of investigation, including the relationship between facial and bodily cues and the consequences of attraction to neoteny for morphological evolutio

Attachment Predicts College Students’ Knowledge, Attitudes, and Skills for Working with Infants, Toddlers, and Families

Research Findings:Adults’ attitudes about attachment relationships are central to how they perceive and respond to children. However, little is known about how attachment styles are related to teachers’ attitudes toward and interactions with infants and toddlers. From a survey of 207 students taking early childhood (EC) courses at 4 U.S. universities, we report relations among students’ attachment styles and their (a) career goals, (b) attitudes about caring for and educating infants and young children, and (c) interaction skills for responding in developmentally supportive ways. Overall, attachment security was positively associated with career goals focused on working with younger children, knowledge about infant/toddler development, attitudes that acknowledge the importance of adult support in children’s development, and developmentally supportive interaction skills. Students who scored high on attachment fearfulness minimized the importance of adults in children’s lives, minimized the importance of the early years for later learning, and endorsed strict and controlling forms of child guidance. Practice or Policy: A conceptual mediation model linking a path from attachment to caregiving skill through knowledge and attitudes is articulated. We propose a person-centered pedagogy for infant/toddler professional preparation that provides opportunities for reflection on one’s own attachment and its effects on work with young childre

Spanish validation of the PICCOLO (Parenting Interactions With Children: Checklist of Observations Linked to Outcomes)

Background/Objective: The aim of this study was to explore the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the Parenting Interactions with Children: Checklist of Observations Linked to Outcomes (PICCOLO; Roggman et al., 2013b). This observational measure is composed of 29 items which assess the quality of four domains of parenting interactions that promote children's development: affection; responsiveness, encouragement, and teaching. Method: The sample included 203 mother-child dyads who had been video-recorded playing together. 56% of the children were male, and 44% were female, aged from 10 to 47 months. Video-recorded observations were rated using PICCOLO items. Results: Confirmatory factor analysis supported that the instrument has four first-order factors corresponding to the hypothesized domains of parenting behaviors, and a second-order factor corresponding to a general factor of positive parenting. Construct validation evidence was compiled by examining the relationship of PICCOLO scores with child age. As expected, teaching domain and total PICCOLO scores were positively correlated with child age. The Spanish PICCOLO also demonstrated good interrater reliability and internal consistency reliability for the four domains scores and the total parenting score. Concurrent criterion-related validity was examined via correlations between parenting scores and child development outcome measures. Conclusions: The Spanish version of the PICCOLO meets the criteria for a reliable and valid observational measurement of parenting interactions with children. The psychometric properties of the instrument make it appropriate for general research purposes, but also for program evaluation of Early Intervention and other parenting-support interventions. This measure, focused on parent strengths, can facilitate, in Spain, family-centered practices in early intervention and other programs that have parenting as an outcome