Dyadic interactions during infant learning: Exploring infant-parent exchanges in experimental eye-tracking studies

The role of parental behaviour in modulating infant learning during experimental studies has been rarely explored. Yet, multiple strands of research suggest that dyadic infant-parent interactions could be as important for infant learning and regulation during experimental studies with infants, as they are during their free, unconstrained play. Recently, we have developed a coding scheme for analysing the quantity and quality of various extraneous behaviours of both the parent and the infant during standard eye-tracking experiments. Here, we present a quantitative analysis of selected parental behaviours and their role in modulating infant task performance. We analysed whether parental looking (at the screen or at the infant), talking and pointing and physical contact change with the task that the infant is performing. The results showed subtle, systematic adjustments of parental behaviours in relation to the task. Moreover, parental behaviours were related to infant performance for tasks that involve learning (habituation task) and free viewing of visual stimuli, but not for those involving simple orienting responses (gap-overlap task). Additional dynamic analyses using Cross-Recurrence Quantification Analysis indicated that parents were closely following the infants' shifts, looking toward and away from the screen. Altogether, these results indicate that infant performance in eye-tracking tasks are associated with subtle adjustments of parental behaviours. This may suggest that early on infants perform learning tasks in coordination with parental behaviour as a dyadic unit of learning.