Parental Scaffolding of Infant Learning

University Of California-Davis, Davis CA

Investigators

Abstract

Every day, infants encounter an enormous amount of new information. Every new object, person, or place introduces new sights, sounds, and experiences to interpret, learn, and remember. Infants are remarkably good at learning new information, especially when it occurs during interactions with parents or caregivers. Many times each day, adults point out and name new objects in books or in the environment, talk to infants about those objects, and describe how objects are similar or different. Research has shown that this type of interaction helps older children learn about the world around them. This project is aimed at understanding the kind of support for learning (often referred to as scaffolding) that parents provide for their infants, and how this scaffolding actually helps infants learn. Eight- to fourteen-month-old infants and their parents will engage in a picture-book reading task that involves introducing two novel object categories. The instructional strategies used by parents and the dynamics of these interactions will be analyzed. Infant category learning will be subsequently tested using a paired-comparison novelty preference paradigm. In a follow-up study, instructional strategies will be experimentally manipulated to test predictions regarding optimal learning conditions. Thus, this project will allow understanding of how parents' strategies facilitate infants' learning of specific features of the world. This work not only provides insight into how infants learn, but may also inform ways in which parents or caregivers can better structure learning contexts for infants at risk for later problems. The results of this work will be broadly disseminated, not only in the scientific community, but also to parents and childcare professionals through social and traditional media, lectures given to parenting groups, and participation in the Yolo County Child Development Conference.