Changes in parent-child interaction in response to intervention

Parent-child interactions during the early years form the basis of many types of skill acquisitions, including fine motor and communication skills. Early intervention programmes aimed at promoting the attainments of children with disabilities or learning delays often suggest ways in which parents can interact with their children. The present study examined whether such intervention changes the nature of the parent-child interaction, using two groups of typically developing infants. The mothers of these two groups of prelinguistic children aged 10–12 months and 17–18 months were recorded talking to their infants when playing with a toy and then when asked to encourage their child to play in a particular way. Analyses of the affective and perceptual salience of the pitch of the mothers’ voices indicated that with the younger infants, but not the older infants, both the affective quality and the dynamic range of the mothers’ voices was reduced in the second condition. It is argued that this reduction enables the younger infants to concentrate on the task but restricts access to the linguistic content of what is said. The implications of these findings for intervention programmes are discussed.