Infant Attention to Foreground Television and Relationship to Joint Visual Attention

The research described here examines infant and parent attention to a familiar baby video. Also of interest, was if infant viewing behaviors influenced parent viewing behaviors, and vice versa. Subjects were 12-15 and 18-21 month-old infants who were observed watching a familiar baby video with one...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Demers, Lindsay B.
Format: Others
Published: ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst 2008
Subjects:
Online Access:https://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/88
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1128&context=theses
Description
Summary:The research described here examines infant and parent attention to a familiar baby video. Also of interest, was if infant viewing behaviors influenced parent viewing behaviors, and vice versa. Subjects were 12-15 and 18-21 month-old infants who were observed watching a familiar baby video with one parent. Overall infants and adults spent less than one-third of the time watching the television. This measure varied greatly across dyads. However, there was a strong, positive relationship within dyads, suggesting that infants and parents may be influencing each other’s viewing behavior. Further analyses revealed that there was a social component that influenced when infants and parents initiated and terminated looks to the television that extended above and beyond the common influence of the formal features of the program. Though this influence was mutual for both the infant and parent, overall, infants tended to ‘lead’ their parents’ looks more frequently than parents’ led their infants’.