Developmental Shift in Multimodal Cue Usage in Early Mother-Child Conversational Initiation

Early mother-child conversational initiation is increasingly understood as a developmentally dynamic, embodied, and socially embedded process in which caregivers and children coordinate multimodal cues, including gaze, gesture, touch, and speech, to establish joint attention and meaning. Drawing on an existing audio-visual corpus of Korean mother-child interactions from 35 dyads aged 8-27 months, sampled across stages of language and motor development, we examine how nonverbal cues preceding verbal conversational onset vary with child age, sex, and speaker role. Results show that initiatory multimodal cues decline with age, especially in conversational blocks where mothers initiate the vocal exchanges, a pattern consistent with a developmental shift toward more verbally-driven interactional strategies. Look cues and object-oriented tactile cues were the most frequent signals preceding conversational blocks, highlighting their central role in initiating exchanges. In addition, initiators produce more initiatory multimodal cues than their partners in the moments preceding conversational onset, pointing to a strategic use of multimodal signals to capture attention and frame the upcoming verbal interaction. Overall, the findings highlight the key role of gaze and object-oriented action in early interaction and the adaptability of communicative strategies in mother-child exchanges as children take on a greater role in verbal initiation.