Families, Not Parents, Differ: Development of Communication in Finnish Infants
Maija Haapakoski1, Maarit Silvén1
1Department of Psychology University of Tampere, Finland.
Abstract:
This longitudinal study on Finnish families was conducted to identify developmental differences in family-level communication among mothers, fathers, and their infants during the second half of the infant's first year, and associations with infants' later language and communicative skills. We examined coregulated communication of parent-infant dyads during 5-min laboratory play sessions at 7 and 11 months. Few differences in mutually regulated communicative exchanges emerged between maternal and paternal dyads, and few developmental changes were found across the whole sample. Families with different communication profiles were identified, and changes rather than stability characterized communicative development at the family level. The family-level differences at 7 months predicted variation in children's language and communicative skills at 14 months.
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