Parent Child Interaction

The purpose of this study was to explore perceptions of parenting and parent-child activities in American families with children aged 0-16 after social distance measures were put in place. Through an online questionnaire, we examined the extent to which parental role, age, education, and perceptions of work productivity impacted parent perceptions of six parenting categories (positive parenting, inconsistent discipline, positive relationships, positive emotions, self-efficacy, and routine management) during the initial months of the pandemic. We also examined children's participation in extracurricular activities, before and after measures of social distancing were implemented. Perceptions of parenting did not differ based on parental roles, education and age, but work productivity had an impact on parents' perceptions of their own feelings and emotions. Parents who described themselves as highly productive reported higher scores for positive emotions, suggesting a link between work and parental wellbeing. A discrepancy was found between the activities that parents liked and disliked doing with their children, with homework and academic activities being the least liked of all. Children's participation in extracurricular activities was also significantly reduced after social distancing was mandated, with arts activities (music in particular) suffering the least amount of reduction. Findings are discussed considering earlier studies on parenting during COVID-19 and concerted cultivation. Implications for future parenting research are outlined.

Developmental transitions, such as the onset of walking, are associated with changes in a broad range of domains, including language development and social interactions. This study used a full-day home observation recording to compare the language environment of age-matched crawling and walking infants. Central to the study was exploring how the language environment related to vocabulary development of each locomotor group. Adult words, infant vocalizations, and parent-child conversational turn-taking were positively associated with infant vocabulary development, but only for walking infants. These findings provide further evidence for the integrated nature of infant locomotion, language development, and the social and linguistic environment.

In this article, the author argues that effective parenting practices could prove to be an effective intervention strategy for bringing fast and consistent social, economic and political development of Dalit communities. By imparting values and practices of positive parenting, government can achieve its goal of social, political and economic inclusion of Dalit in the main stream of society.

Despite contemporary acceptance that children are active agents in their own socialization, that causality between parents and children is bidirectional, and that context matters, basic concepts used in socialization research continue to reflect an underlying mechanistic. In this chapter it is proposed that a dialectical relational systems conception of the transaction model provides direction for future advances in the study of dynamic parent-child socialization processes with an emphasis of intergenerational change, not only continuity. The chapter begins by exploring dialectics as a framework underlying an organismic-contextual metatheory for understanding the transactional model of human development. The chapter then outlines social relational theory as a framework for translating four assumptions of a dialectical ontology including agency, holism, contradiction, and synthesis to reformulate major transactional processes in parent-child relations and socialization. The chapter ends by considering implications for application and methodology informed by dialectics.

Present day parents have become accustomed to regularly posting information and disclosing details about their children on social media, i.e. engaging in sharenting. Although many parents value the practice as it not only enables to involve distant family members and friends in the growing up of the children, but has also become a practice for collecting precious memories receiving social support and sharing one's parenting dilemmas; sharenting has still gained quite a negative public image. The current article aims to highlight some of the most dominant concerns that scholars have voiced when talking about the dark sides of sharenting-the emergence of a datafied child, loss of privacy and a potential distress the practices of sharenting might cause to the parent-child relationship.

Parenting is a journey, a process and not an event. We are born and bred differently but unified by the blood of Jesus Christ. Regardless of their societal status, children are important and they are the dearest ones of God. Children are a gift from God and they belong to Him. Parents have a role to nature children, it is your duty as a parent to teach children lifestyles, upkeep and humanity (Ubuntu/hunhu). Male and female children should grow up knowing who they are in Christ Jesus. Their roles and duties should be clear from childhood so that they won’t confuse worldly standards and Godly standards. Hence I Peter 5 verse 2 (AMP) says “Tend (nurture, guard, guide, and fold) the flock of God that is [your responsibility]….” The only way to ingrain these values in our children is through equipping their first teachers and mentors, and that is the parents. Like in any profession, parents need to be trained constantly to take care of the children.

Absent parents may affect the development of a child but what about toxic parents? This article is my humble opinion about this matter & a take of a difficult childhood some of my friends had to endure as they are growing up, resulting in the need for strong emotional support from friends & their significant other.

This easy-to-read, comprehensive guide contains what you need to know on how to parent with ‎confidence. Packed with advice and powerful tips, using the latest research on child development and ‎parenting techniques, it offers a mine of information on how to let children flourish, take the ‎frustration out of parenting and develop happy family relations. Authors provide guidance on ‎developing character, knowledge, values, and skills, as well as a faith-based outlook in children, ‎benefitting parents with kids of all ages. The many strategies and techniques offered include teaching ‎children how to problem-solve, make decisions, and develop self-esteem. Raising God conscious, moral, ‎successful children, with a sense of civic responsibility in today’s world is not easy. It is also not ‎impossible. Effective parenting is the key. ‎

Most importantly the book proposes Islamic solutions to problematic issues in raising children. I was impressed ‎‎with the comprehensive coverage of most available theories of child development. Authors have not missed talking ‎‎about the common misconceptions of popular psychology.‎

Dr. Kutaiba Chaleby, Child Psychiatrist, certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He is also ‎former Head, Section of Psychiatry, King Faisal Hospital and Research Center, Saudi Arabia.‎

One of the most insightful and comprehensive books on effective parenting. The work tackles issues in the home ‎‎environment and the experiential world of children and has the ingredients to transform families across the globe. ‎

Edris Khamissa, International Consultant in Education and Human Development ‎

The book has many outstanding features and I say this as an author of many books on the subject of parenting and ‎‎family matters, which have been translated into various languages. Presents many resources and valuable references ‎‎to help parents, points out the proper sense of fulfilment for children and emphasizes that this should come from ‎‎community attachment and involvement as well as a family bond, and offers a great list of activities at the end of ‎‎each chapter, which, if applied by parents, will ensure a healthy and positive family atmosphere.‎

Dr. Mohamed R. Beshir, member of the advisory board of SIFCA “Shura of Islamic Family Counselors of ‎America.” Also, Advisor to the Muslim Association of Canada (MAC) and the Muslim American Society (MAS) ‎departments on Tarbiyah matters.‎

The book encourages parenting by both the Father and Mother versed in family communication. The investment ‎of ‎time, effort, love and understanding in raising children who will have their own personalities is emphasized ‎‎repeatedly. The Qur’anic references in this book are good and make the point without overwhelming the larger ‎‎message. Clearly the authors have an impressive religious background and they marshal their arguments well. It ‎‎would not surprise me if parts of the book were extracted and summarized for seminars, counselling and other ‎‎tasks.‎

Paul Henry Tyson, retired US Foreign Service Officer who has worked in
Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.‎

The study aims to investigate the relationship between parental authority and parent-child relationship and also to explore the differences between males and females in terms of their relationship with their parents. The study was conducted among 160 participants between the age of 17 to 25 in Klang Valley, Selangor, Malaysia. The instruments used in the present study were Parent-Child Relationship Survey (PCRS) and Parental Authority Questionnaire (PAQ). The results revealed that there is a significant parent-child relationship when the mother or father was authoritative in their parenting style. Furthermore, male participants rated both parents as significantly more authoritarian as compared to female participants. Male participants also rated both parents as significantly more permissive as compared to the ratings of their counterparts. Lastly, there was no significant difference between gender and parent-child relationship.

Language development requires both basic cognitive mechanisms for learning language and a rich social context from which learning takes off. Disruptions in learning mechanisms, processing abilities, and/or social interactions increase the risks associated with social exclusion or developmental delays. Given the complexity of language processes, a multilevel approach is proposed where both cognitive mechanisms, genetic and environmental factors need to be probed together with their possible interactions. Here we review and discuss such interplay between environment and genetic predispositions in understanding language disorders, with a particular focus on a possible endophenotype, the ability for statistical sequential learning.

Children themselves play active roles in shaping their developmental trajectories. The constant interplay of a wide range of biological, familial, social, and cultural factors shapes development. In this study, we examined the links between maternal control and 5-to 7-year-old children's compliance in a cross-cultural sample (N = 89: 30 Chinese in Taiwan, 30 Chinese immigrants in the United Kingdom, and 29 nonimmigrant White English in the United Kingdom) using observational data. The results showed that the English mothers used less negative control and were more responsive than the Chinese immigrant mothers, and that the English mothers also showed more positive affect than both the Chinese immigrant and Taiwanese mothers. The Taiwanese children showed more situational compliance than the Chinese immigrant children, whereas there were no significant cultural differences in committed compliance and oppositional behaviour. Further regression analyses showed that committed compliance, situational compliance, and oppositional behaviour were associated with different predictors. Converging evidence from both observational tasks showed that committed compliance, moderated by surgency, appeared to increase as children grew older and was negatively influenced by maternal negative control. Different trends emerged for child opposition or noncompliance in the two tasks. In the Etch-a-Sketch task, noncompliance was accounted for by child age and temperament, but not by any maternal behaviour, whereas opposition in the clean-up task was not predicted by child age or temperament but was associated with maternal use of force. Finally, situational compliance could not be predicted by child age and temperament alone, but the addition of cultural group and maternal control significantly increased the prediction of situational compliance. These results suggested different pathways for the development of committed compliance, situational compliance, and opposition.

A large body of empirical research has focused on understanding children's biological knowledge development. However, limited research has investigated the informal learning experiences through which children actively construct biological concepts. The current study focused on examining whether parents provide information that supports and shapes children's emerging biological knowledge within settings that provide opportunities for biological learning about animals. We observed parent–child interaction within informal learning environments about two different types of animals: A penguin exhibit at a zoo and an insect exhibit at a science museum. Fifty-two families with preschool and school-aged children participated. Parents more frequently provided important, unobservable information such as predictions and causal inferences to the youngest children, potentially supporting the development of children's knowledge. However, parents seldom explicitly supported their children's knowledge by providing explanations of readily observable biological processes. Further research examining these and other direct and indirect animal experiences in informal learning settings can help us better understand how to support children's early biological learning.

This study examines the way that adults interact with children in storytelling. The analysis of a small set of narrations of a picture book by nine adults to children aged between 1;5 and 4;8 identified two storytelling styles. Some adults chose a collaborative style and co-constructed the story with the child. Others chose an elaborate storytelling style building the story through repetition and rephrasing. Some tendencies relating to the age of the child listener were found. When telling stories to younger children, adults concentrated more on gaining and maintaining attention and collaborated less than with older or more verbal children. All adults used repetition and elaboration and it is argued that this is a feature of Wumpurrarni English storytelling more generally. The study also shows some ways that the traditional language Warumungu is used in contemporary speech styles to children.

Consistent with inclusive fitness theory, evolutionary biologists predict that individuals care more for their biological than their social children and hence that biological children assess the relationships to their parents better than stepchildren. To test this assumption, we use data from the U.S. National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Unlike many other studies
that have been conducted so far, this survey allows us to analyze the consequences of the dynamic between social and biological parent-child relationships  within the same families. We use
comparisons of sibling pairs and fixed-effects regression to achieve the within-family comparison. Both the descriptive and multivariate regression results confirm that – even after controlling for other relevant influences – biological parenthood
matters with regard to children’s relationship assessments (perceived parental care and closeness of the parent-child relationship) and in both the relationships to resident fathers and mothers. In the discussion, we comment on the possible inte-
gration of the evolutionary and sociological perspectives and close with some recommendations for future data collection that could allow researchers to analyze the relative impact of biological and social influences on parent-child relationships on a more fine-grained level.

Die Geschichte eines Drahtseilaktes Im englischen Sprachraum erörtert man soziale Beziehungen seit über dreihundert Jahren als "Machtbalancen". Von dort hat sich der Begriff verbreitet und dient heute immer häufiger zur Untersuchung von Stärkeverhältnissen in allen möglichen Beziehungsgeflechten -von Parteianalysen über Tarifkonflikte oder den Verbraucherschutz bis zu Familien. Doch die deutsche Gedankenwelt fremdelt bis heute insgesamt noch etwas mit dem begrifflichen Bild der Machtbalancen, insbesondere in Hinblick auf Familie. Der intensive Wunsch nach quasi ‚natürlichen', nicht begründungsbedürftigen Stärke-und Hierarchieverhältnissen scheint psycho-sozial noch tief verankert zu sein. Sie offen auf den Punkt zu bringen oder zu hinterfragen, ist uns bis heute oft äußerst unangenehm -dürfen Politiker, Geschäftsführerinnen, Ärzte, Pilotinnen, Lehrer, Lokführerinnen, Kinder oder gar Eltern versuchen stärker zu werden? Darf es ihnen also um Macht gehen?

This small study was undertaken as part of an MA in Early Childhood Music Education. A case study of a 16-month-old child's musical experiences through play in the home, it is informed by theoretical perspectives on child development and learning, musical learning and musical childhoods. The data were gathered through naturalistic observations of the child in his home and recorded in the form of video snapshots in time. Information about the child's background was gained through a short conversation with his parents. Of the video taken over five visits with the family, three short vignettes were chosen for analysis. These vignettes were then transcribed as illustrative detailed descriptions. Vignette 1 examines the affordances of sound makers and how these influence a child's music making. Vignette 2 considers the aural and physical environment and the role recorded music can play in affect regulation. Vignette 3 shows an episode with a musical toy and discusses the affordances of such toys, their capacity for multimodal use, and their role in parent-child interaction. The study identified implications for practice, some of the limitations of working in the home, and areas of interest for future research.

In this paper we offer a longitudinal Conversation Analysis of talk
lasting 18 months between a father and son, which reveals changes in the child’s level of Interactional Competence (IC). We propose an index of developing IC based upon Sacks’ distinction between “invited” and “volunteered” stories. While stories have a “socialization function” we suggest stories may be tracked in terms of IC also. What has been called “today narrative” routines (“What did you do at school today”, etc.), initiated by the father, predominate in a series of conversations. The analysis reveals how the child is encouraged to take extended turns through the father’s questions and comments, which are developed into a storytelling sequence. We observe that the child’s responses to the initial inquiries become more elaborate over time. Furthermore, there is a gradual resistance to the invited story format because it inhibits how the child organizes his stories. Volunteered stories obtain a more personal ‘voice’. The paper showcases the nexus between socialization and interactional competence.

The article investigates two interconnected issues: the interaction organization in a family ritual and the modes of small children's participation in it. Focusing on the celebration of a first birthday in Poland, we explore how the different modes of a one-year-old child taking part in the multiparty interaction are collaboratively produced. We present two contrastive cases in terms of differences in space arrangements and children's body control, which are analyzed in relation to their own initiatives and responses. We suggest that the differentiations in their organization correspond to changing social meanings and effects of the whole ritual.

Researchers have long studied parenting practices, and have recently paid increasing attention to cross-cultural differences. Unfortunately, most of the research has only examined self-report data; studies including both
self-report and observational data are still very rare.
This study examined the disciplinary methods of mothers (of 5- to 7-year-old children) in a cross-cultural sample (N = 89: 30 Chinese in Taiwan, 30 Chinese immigrants in the UK, and 29 non-immigrant white English in the UK) using both questionnaires and observational data.
Cultural differences were found between groups both in reported, as well as observed parenting. The Taiwanese mothers reported greater use of Chinese-specific parenting methods as well as physical coercion and were observed to use more (gentle and assertive) physical intervention than the Chinese immigrant and English mothers. The Chinese immigrant mothers reported a higher degree of granting child autonomy than the Taiwanese and English mothers. These findings provided valuable insights into parenting in different cultural contexts, underscoring the importance of examining both reported and observed behaviour, in order to understand human development from a holistic perspective.

Are babies divine, or do they have the devil in them? Should parents talk to their infants, or is it a waste of time? This book provides answers to these and many other questions about the nature and nurturing of infants. In fact, it provides several distinct answers to each one.

These answers appear as advice to parents in seven societies around the world. The authors of this book have imagined what a foreign-born Dr. Spock might have written if he (or she) were a healer from Bali . . . or an Aboriginal grandmother from the Australian desert . . . or a diviner from a rural village in West Africa. As the seven “manuals” that make up this book reveal, experts from elsewhere offer intriguingly different advice to new parents.

The creative format of this book brings alive a rich fund of ethnographic knowledge about seven societies, vividly illustrating a simple but powerful truth: there are many models of babyhood, each shaped by deeply held values and widely varying cultural contexts.

After reading this book, child-rearing may never again seem a matter of “common sense.”

What is the function of babbling in language learning? We examined the structure of parental speech as a function of contingency on infants' non-cry prelinguistic vocalizations. We analyzed several acoustic and linguistic measures of caregivers' speech. Contingent speech was less lexically diverse and shorter in utterance length than non-contingent speech. We also found that the lexical diversity of contingent parental speech only predicted infant vocal maturity. These findings illustrate a new form of influence infants have over their ambient language in everyday learning environments. By vocalizing, infants catalyze the production of simplified, more easily learnable language from caregivers.

Everyday interaction is not a faultless process. It is possible for the process to experience troubles in speaking, hearing or understanding that can lead to interactional breakdowns between speakers. One available mechanism for speakers to address and resolve trouble is through other-initiated repair (OIR). Majority of OIR studies to date have used English language as data source. This may not entirely describe similar strategies employ by speakers of other languages when they participate in OIR. The present study aims to examine strategies for speakers of Malay language to initiate repair following troubles in everyday interaction. Three parent-child dyads of Malay language speakers were selected as participants. Their interaction over several homely activities (i.e. family meal time) were recorded and later transcribed following Jefferson Transcription System (2004). Analysis on strategies was quantitatively performed following Philip's (2008) Clarification Request coding scheme. Overall result showed that parents and children employ different types of strategies when they are in position to initiate repair. Children largely depend on the use of open-class word that is known to be a weak repair initiator while parents are consistent with a more specific repair initiator. Result from this study provides novel discovery on how Malay speakers initiate repair in the context of parent-child interaction and it can serve as comparative data for future typological studies.

Objective: To assess an intervention to familiarise parents with children’s books for use in primary (5–11 years) sex and relationship education (SRE) classes.
Method: Case study of a 7-week programme in one London primary school, using ethnographic observation, semi-structured interviews and focus groups with parents (n=7) and key stakeholders (n=4), and pre- and post-programme self-completion questionnaires (n=9).
Results: Parents reported increased understanding of the SRE curriculum and awareness of relevant children’s books, enhanced interactions with their children on SRE topics and some positive effects on partners and attitudes towards the school. There was increased confidence in addressing issues in the SRE curriculum for parents of 8- to 10-year-olds, although reduced confidence for one mother.
Conclusions: Familiarising parents with materials has the potential to enhance SRE, by improving coherence between educators’ and parents’ messages to children about sex and relationships, increased discussion of SRE topics in parent–child conversations and reduced parental anxiety about topics such as sexual orientation. Future challenges of involving fathers, scalability and sustainability highlight the dilemma of how best to enable parental choice or make equalities interventions.
Keywords: Children, England, parents, primary education, sex and relationship education, sex education.

This study assessed whether infant-directed videos designed to promote parent-child interactions actually support such engagement. Parents watched videos from the Baby Einstein or the Sesame Beginnings series for 2 weeks at home with their 12-or 18-month-old infants. Baby Einstein encourages parents to label objects and actions; Sesame Beginnings models activities in which parents can engage with their children. A control group was not provided videos for home viewing. In laboratory sessions, parent-child interactions were recorded during free play without TV, during the presentation of one of the videos, and immediately after watching. During viewing, interactions decreased in quantity and quality across groups; however, parents used video content as a basis for interaction. Coviewing Sesame Beginnings at home was positively associated with quantity of parent-child interaction during the initial free-play session. Furthermore, the quantity and quality of interactions were greater immediately following viewing of Sesame Beginnings than with Baby Einstein.

The present study aims to examine the influence of father’s and mother’s demographic characteristics in positive and negative parenting practices. Research sample consisted of 480 married parents who had children in the public primary school 6 – 12 years old. 68% of parents resided in urban areas, 75% were mothers, 72% had one or two children, 65% of parents were higher educated and 70% of parents had medium and high family income. Parents completed Alabama Parenting Questionnaire which refers to positive and negative parenting practices that parents adopt to raise their children. Research findings showed that parents’ gender, age, family income, residence, educational level and the number of children in the family and children’ gender are factors that affected parents’ effectiveness. Results indicated that mothers were more involved in their children lives and applied more positive parenting practices than fathers. Also, parent’s educational level, family income and parents’ reside...

This paper discusses the mother's struggle for children learning mentoring during the Covid-19 Outbreak in the Rural. We argue the unpreparedness of the education system in dealing with crises puts mothers in unpredictable and submissive situations. Interesting research because earlier studies have not been able to properly reveal their role. The narrative approach is used to access heroic stories, sacrifices, and full of meaning. We collected 47 informant data, but only 16 women were willing to be interviewed in-depth using six open-ended questions. We find five key narratives of mothers' experiences: the knowledge struggle, the technology struggle, the economic struggle, the emotional struggle, and the physical struggle. Unexpectedly before, mothers also suffer fatigue and pain for physical struggle. Gender stereotypes and social norms as village women are discussed. This research emphasizes the importance of education policy intervention in times of crisis, especially in the areas of human resources, economy, and access to information.

This study seeks to examine how both parents and children contribute interactionally to the dialogic process of negotiating their divergent opinions during mealtime conversations. Within a data corpus comprising 30 video-recorded meals of 10 Swiss and Italian families, 132 argumentative discussions were selected for qualitative analysis by adopting the pragma-dialectical model of a critical discussion. Despite the differences in roles, age, and competencies between parents and children—which help explain both the higher number of different arguments used by parents and the fact that the most frequent type of conclusion was when the child accepted the parent's standpoint—the findings of the pragma-dialectical analysis indicate that the process of negotiating the divergent opinions between parents and children is a co-constructed dialogic process wherein both parties play a fundamental role. By engaging in argumentative discussions, parents accept the commitment of clarifying to their children the reasons on which their standpoints are based. Children, in turn, encourage their parents to advance arguments to justify their standpoints by asking questions. Argumentative discussions in the family context should thus be viewed as a bidirectional dialogical process that opens a shared space for parents and children to think together.

Everyday interaction is not a faultless process. It is possible for the process to experience troubles in speaking, hearing or understanding that can lead to interactional breakdowns between speakers. One available mechanism for speakers to address and resolve trouble is through other-initiated repair (OIR). Majority of OIR studies to date have used English language as data source. This may not entirely describe similar strategies employ by speakers of other languages when they participate in OIR. The present study aims to examine strategies for speakers of Malay language to initiate repair following troubles in everyday interaction. Three parent-child dyads of Malay language speakers were selected as participants. Their interaction over several homely activities (i.e. family meal time) were recorded and later transcribed following Jefferson Transcription System (2004). Analysis on strategies was quantitatively performed following Philip's (2008) Clarification Request coding scheme. Overall result showed that parents and children employ different types of strategies when they are in position to initiate repair. Children largely depend on the use of open-class word that is known to be a weak repair initiator while parents are consistent with a more specific repair initiator. Result from this study provides novel discovery on how Malay speakers initiate repair in the context of parent-child interaction and it can serve as comparative data for future typological studies.

Parent-child dyadic rigidity and negative affect contribute to children’s higher levels of externalizing problems.  The present longitudinal study examined whether the opposite constructs of dyadic flexibility and positive affect predicted lower levels of externalizing behavior problems across the early childhood period.  Mother-child (N = 163) and father-child (n = 94) dyads engaged in a challenging block design task at home when children were three years old.  Dynamic systems methods were used to derive dyadic positive affect and three indicators of dyadic flexibility (range, dispersion, and transitions) from observational coding.  We hypothesized that the interaction between dyadic flexibility and positive affect would predict lower levels of externalizing problems at age five and a half years as rated by mothers and teachers, controlling for stability in externalizing problems, task time, child gender, and the child’s effortful control.  The hypothesis was supported in predicting teacher ratings of child externalizing from both mother-child and father-child interactions.  There were also differential main effects for mothers and fathers: mother-child flexibility was detrimental and father-child flexibility was beneficial for child outcomes.  Results support the inclusion of adaptive and dynamic parent-child coregulation processes in the study of children’s early disruptive behavior.

Based on data taken from interactions between mother/father and infants, this paper deals with acts of consolation and specifically analysing the possible effects of reducing mental suffering. The analysis illustrates that processes of pain, both mentally and physically, correspond

The social sciences are struggling to understand the dynamics of social groups as complex systems (Strogatz, 2001). How do individuals adapt their behaviors in the presence of others? How do they learn patterns of social information? Answering such questions requires theoretical frameworks and predictive models that are closely fitted to empirical behavioral, ethnographic, and physiological data. A major topic is how humans develop social behaviors and social knowledge during infancy. There is evidence that the foundations of social behaviors are laid in infant-caregiver interactions (Sroufe, 1996). What remains to be established is how the structure of infants' social and physical environment interacts with changes in their neural, sensorimotor, and body structures to yield new social knowledge and behavior.

Parent-child shared reading of storybooks is an important activity for language development, especially if it is carried out dialogically. Dialogic Reading (DR) is a shared reading activity in which the adult intersperses reading out loud with questions about the story, praising and expanding the child´s verbalizations. It is important to ask open questions (not answerable with yes or no, nor simply by pointing), thus giving the child opportunities to engage verbally and produce increasingly complex responses. DR should begin early and be performed regularly in order to impact language, hence the importance of investigating effective instruction strategies. Parental DR training using video modeling has shown promising effects, but few studies have directly assessed the effects on parents´ behavior during shared reading, which was the aim of the present study. Pedro, Clara and Aline participated with their children in a four-stage training program using an across-subject multiple baseline design: Baseline (BL), in which they read with their children as usual; Intervention 1 - Learning to Ask Open Questions, focused on asking simple open questions about narrative and illustrations (e.g., who, when, how, where, etc.); Intervention 2 - Learning to Praise and Expand, focused on teaching parents to recognize and praise their children’s participation and to expand their responses; Intervention 3 - Learning to Vary Questions, focused on the inclusion of questions requiring the child to recall previous parts of the story, make inferences and relate the story to their personal experiences. Training and shared reading took place in participants´ homes.

Each intervention included (1) feedback on repertoires acquired in the previous phase, (2) Instructions (3) Video Modeling. After each intervention, parents were instructed to apply what they learned during the following weeks and record reading sessions using a digital camera. Parents’ behavior was scored with an adapted version of the ACIRI (Adult / Child Interactive Reading Inventory) in which the three-point qualitative scale was replaced by response rate for countable behaviors. Results showed no interaction beyond straight reading of storybooks during BL, confirming previous studies. Parents´ questions and praise emerged immediately after Intervention 1 for Pedro and Clara. Aline was given a boost training session focused on selecting books for DR, to overcome a pattern of questions and answers centered on vocabulary. Parents´ open questions established a dialogue that was maintained throughout subsequent sessions and with different books. There were no results clearly attributable to Intervention 2 and only Pedro formulated some of the new types of questions taught in Intervention 3. We discuss the complexity of components taught in each intervention in terms of stimulus control, e.g., recall questions require the adult´s behavior to be sensitive to previous parts of the story, which is not necessarily true in the case of simple wh- questions about illustrations. More explicit instruction methodologies may be needed for these more complex DR strategies. We suggest that future studies plan interventions based on the stimulus control relations involved in each DR strategy.

In this paper, we examine the interactional ways that families make meaning from biological exhibits during a visit to an interactive science center. To understand the museum visits from the perspectives of the families, we use ethnographic and discourse analytic methods, including pre-and postvisit interviews, videotaped observations of the museum visits, and coding and analysis of utterances from naturally occurring conversations. We employ an Everyday Expertise framework to understand how families use ideas and materials to make meaning from the scientific content presented in exhibits. We argue that individual and cognitive aspects of learning are fundamentally connected to the social and cultural aspects of learning; therefore, we analyze the intertwining role of individual cognitive resources, situated activities, and cultural toolkit resources that support learning interactions and processes. Findings indicate how families use a variety of knowledge types (epistemic resources) to make sense of exhibit content, how they make sense of biological content by transferring cultural epistemic resources from prior experiences, and how families use two types of scientific epistemic resources-biological facts and perceptual descriptions-as the primary means to make sense of biological exhibits. C 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 94:478 -505, 2010

The social sciences are struggling to understand the dynamics of social groups as complex systems. How do individuals adapt their behaviors in the presence of others? How do they learn patterns of social information? Answering such questions requires theoretical frameworks and predictive models that are closely fitted to empirical behavioral, ethnographic, and physiological data. A major topic is how humans develop social behaviors and social knowledge during infancy.

Parents' use of conventional versus unconventional labels with their two- (n=12), three- (n=12) and four-year-old children (n=12) was assessed as they talked about objects that were either known or unknown to them. For known objects, parents provided typical conventional labels casually during the conversation. For unknown objects, parents were less likely to use typical nouns as labels and marked their labels with additional information suggesting that the labels might be unconventional. Parents marked potentially unconventional labels by providing explicit statements of ignorance and paralinguistic cues of uncertainty. These patterns were strongest when the unknown objects were manufactured as opposed to homemade, possibly because manufactured objects are supposed to have conventional names that parents were unable to provide. Parents' marking of unconventional labels may help children recognize when new word forms should be treated with caution and guide their learning accordingly.

Objective: To assess an intervention to familiarise parents with children’s books for use in primary (5–11 years) sex and relationship education (SRE) classes. Method: Case study of a 7-week programme in one London primary school, using ethnographic observation, semi-structured interviews and focus groups with parents (n=7) and key stakeholders (n=4), and pre- and post-programme self-completion questionnaires (n=9). Results: Parents reported increased understanding of the SRE curriculum and awareness of relevant children’s books, enhanced interactions with their children on SRE topics and some positive effects on partners and attitudes towards the school. There was increased confidence in addressing issues in the SRE curriculum for parents of 8- to 10-year-olds, although reduced confidence for one mother. Conclusions: Familiarising parents with materials has the potential to enhance SRE, by improving coherence between educators’ and parents’ messages to children about sex and relati...

Home learning environments prior to school are well-known predictors of educational trajectories but research has neglected children aged under three. The new Toddler Home Learning Environment (THLE) scale is one response and this paper investigates its reliability and validity. The THLE is an adaptation of the Preschool HLE (PHLE) measure developed by the Effective PreSchool Primary and Secondary Education (EPPSE) investigation in the 1990s. The THLE was developed as part of the Evaluation of Children's Centers in England (ECCE) investigation that followed a sample of 2,608 of families from 14 to 38 months. The THLE was administered at 14 months, the PHLE at 38. The 8-item THLE evidences internal consistency via statistical reliability coefficients and Confirmatory Factor Analysis plus measurement validity via statistically significant and research-appropriate associations with the PHLE, three measures of child development, and child and parent demographics. This paper moves the HLE literature forward with a new parental self-report scale of the HLE that is for use with toddlers.

Humans, as social beings, are capable of employing various behavioral cues, such as gaze, speech, manual action, and body posture, in everyday communication. However, to extract fine-grained interaction patterns in social contexts has been presented with methodological challenges. Cross-Recurrence Plot Quantification Analysis (CRQA) is an analysis method invented in theoretical physics and recently applied to cognitive science to study interpersonal coordination. In this paper, we extend this approach to analyzing joint activities in child-parent interaction. We define a new representation as Cross Recurrence Block based on CRQA. With this representation, we are able to capture interpersonal dynamics from more than two behavioral streams in one Cross Recurrence Plot and derive a suite of measures to quantify detailed characteristics of coordination. Using a data set collected from a child-parent interaction study, we show that these quantitative measures of joint activities reveal developmental changes in coordinative behavioral patterns between children and parents.

Naturalistic observations of infant/caregiver social attention have yielded rich information about human social development. However, observational data are expensive, laborious, and reliant on fallible human coders. We model interactions between caregivers and infants using a three dimensional simulation environment in order to gain greater insight into the development of infant attention sharing, specifically gaze following. Most models of infant cognition have been only abstractly linked to the detail of a real life environment and ...

After the “discovery of childhood“ 200 years ago, the discovery of parenthood is badly needed today. In the present-day figuration of child-centered families and child-decentered societies the position of parents has come under enormous pressure. This can only be understood if parenthood itself becomes an object of sociological interest. To describe parenthood the theory of socialization offers various concepts, but it cannot explain the long-term psychogenetic and sociogenetic development of parenthood in different societies over time. For the description of parenthood as a basic process of human societies, promising concepts can be found in the process sociology and theory of the civilizing process of Elias. Following this approach the essay outlines some of its con-cepts: the habitus of parenthood and the corresponding ideals of parenthood, balances of shame with regard to parenthood, the changing balances of power and shame regarding the positions of children and parents within family and society. (available only in German)