'Look at me' toddlers eager to collaborate and learn

Attention-seeking children's development is fostered by parents who respond favourably, Concordia study finds

2012-03-20

(Press-News.org) Montreal, March 19, 2012 – Parents should think twice before brushing off their child's calls to "look at me!" A Concordia study published in the journal Child Development is the first to show that toddlers' expectations of how their parent will respond to their needs and bids for attention relate to how eager they are to collaborate and learn.

Collaboration in toddlers has been linked to the acquisition of social rules and norms later in childhood.

Understanding what contributes to more collaboration can help improve conscience development in children.

Marie-Pierre Gosselin, a PhD candidate in the Department of Psychology at Concordia University and lead author of the study explains that "toddlers whose parents have consistently responded positively to their attention-seeking expect interactions to be fulfilling. As a result, they're eager to collaborate with their parents' attempts to socialize them."

While scientists and caregivers alike have long theorized that toddlers have certain expectations of their parent's behavior, no one had provided a reliable measure of those expectations. By observing the quality of toddlers' attention-seeking, Gosselin and co-author David R. Forman, currently at the State University of New York at Geneseo, were able to quantify toddlers' expectations.

In the first part of the study, parent and child were put in the same room and the parent was asked to fill out a long survey with questions that required attention and focus. This usually provoked attention-seeking behaviors in the child. Some toddlers pointed at and shared objects with their parent, laughed and smiled while talking to the parent, and used phrases like, "excuse me mommy." This constituted high-quality behaviour in the researchers' eyes. Low-quality attention-seeking behaviour was shown by toddlers who cried, screamed, or even took the parent's pen and threw it across the room.

Gosselin says that they expected to find that parents who had been attentive, sensitive and responsive to their child in a variety of contexts would have children who showed more positive, high-quality attention-seeking behaviours than children of less responsive parents because these behaviors reflected the child's expectations of a parent's response. In the second part of the study, the child had to watch his or her parent perform a series of actions (such as, how to retrieve a ball using three specific movements) and then try to imitate them. Gosselin found that toddlers who showed positive attention-seeking behaviours collaborated more with the parent in this task than those who showed more negative attention-seeking behaviours when the parent was busy.

According to Gosselin, the study shows that it is important to encourage positive or high-quality attention-seeking in toddlers because it predicts their motivation to collaborate and participate in skill building activities.

"For parents it's important to know that it's not the amount of attention seeking but really the quality of attention seeking that their toddler displays that matters for their development," says Gosselin.

Gosselin is now in the process of analyzing data on what happens when the parent is busy on the phone. She says that with the spread of cell phones it is important to see what kind of attention-seeking behaviors children resort to in this situation, how parents respond, and what are the implications for their development. She also plans to look into how toddlers seek attention from teachers and day-care workers.

###Partners in research: This research was funded by grants from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Centre for Research in Human Development.

Related Links: Cited Study:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22288442 Centre for Research in Human Development:
http://crdh.concordia.ca/

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Newborn screening for DMD shows promise as an international model

2012-03-20

Investigators at Nationwide Children's Hospital, working with the DNA Sequencing Core Facility at the University of Utah, have developed an approach to newborn screening (NBS) for the life-threatening genetic disorder, Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and potentially other muscular dystrophies. As a model for NBS, the approach published online in January in the Annals of Neurology provides evidence that this approach could be implemented if approved by regulatory bodies at a state level or alternatively through the Secretary's Advisory Committee on Heritable Disorders ...

Experients may force revision of astrophysical models of the universe

2012-03-20

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — In a challenge to current astrophysical models of the universe, researchers at Sandia National Laboratories Z machine and the University of Rostock in Germany have found that current estimates of ice-giant planetary interiors overstate water's compressibility by as much as 30 percent. The work was reported in the paper "Probing the Interior of the Ice Giants" in the Feb. 27 Physical Review Letters. "Our results question science's understanding of the internal structure of these planets," said Sandia lead author Marcus Knudson, "and should require ...

Circadian rhythms have profound influence on metabolic output, UCI study reveals

2012-03-20

Irvine, Calif., March 19, 2012 — By analyzing the hundreds of metabolic products present in the liver, researchers with the UC Irvine Center for Epigenetics & Metabolism have discovered that circadian rhythms – our own body clock – greatly control the production of such key building blocks as amino acids, carbohydrates and lipids. They identified more than 600 liver-originated metabolites, which are the chemical substances created by metabolism that sustain and promote cell health and growth. Approximately 60 percent of these metabolites were found to be dependent on ...

Penn researchers find mentoring provides health benefits for African American veterans with diabetes

2012-03-20

(Philadelphia) – Intervention by peer mentors has a statistically significant effect on improving glucose control in African American veterans with diabetes, according to a study by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia VA Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion (CHERP). Full results of the study were published in the March 20th issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine. In the study 118 African American veterans aged 50-70 years old with persistently poor diabetes control were randomly assigned to ...

Discovery provides blueprint for new drugs that can inhibit hepatitis C virus

2012-03-20

Chemists at the University of California, San Diego have produced the first high resolution structure of a molecule that when attached to the genetic material of the hepatitis C virus prevents it from reproducing. Hepatitis C is a chronic infectious disease that affects some 170 million people worldwide and causes chronic liver disease and liver cancer. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hepatitis C now kills more Americans each year than HIV. The structure of the molecule, which was published in a paper in this week's early online edition ...

1 solution to global overfishing found

2012-03-20

A study by the Wildlife Conservation Society, the ARC Centre for Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, and other groups on more than 40 coral reefs in the Indian and Pacific Oceans indicates that "co-management"—a collaborative arrangement between local communities, conservation groups, and governments—provides one solution to a vexing global problem: overfishing. The finding is the outcome of the largest field investigation of co-managed tropical coral reef fisheries ever conducted, an effort in which researchers studied 42 managed reef systems in five countries. The team ...

MIT research: Study finds room to store CO2 underground

2012-03-20

A new study by researchers at MIT shows that there is enough capacity in deep saline aquifers in the United States to store at least a century's worth of carbon dioxide emissions from the nation's coal-fired powerplants. Though questions remain about the economics of systems to capture and store such gases, this study addresses a major issue that has overshadowed such proposals. The MIT team's analysis — led by Ruben Juanes, the ARCO Associate Professor in Energy Studies in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and part of the doctoral thesis work of ...

A biplane to break the sound barrier

2012-03-20

For 27 years, the Concorde provided its passengers with a rare luxury: time saved. For a pricey fare, the sleek supersonic jet ferried its ticketholders from New York to Paris in a mere three-and-a-half hours — just enough time for a nap and an aperitif. Over the years, expensive tickets, high fuel costs, limited seating and noise disruption from the jet's sonic boom slowed interest and ticket sales. On Nov. 26, 2003, the Concorde — and commercial supersonic travel — retired from service. Since then, a number of groups have been working on designs for the next generation ...

NASA satellites see rainfall left behind from Cyclone Lua's landfall

2012-03-20

NASA's TRMM satellite added up the rainfall generated from Cyclone Lua as it made landfall in northern Australia on March 17, and tracked southward through March 19. The largest rainfall amounts appeared just off the coast before Lua made landfall, and continued generating heavy rainfall as it moved inland. On Saturday, March 17, 2012, Lua's center crossed the Australia coastline at Pardoo about 3 p.m. (local time/Australia) bringing winds gusting up to 155 mph (250 kph) and heavy rainfall. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Port Hedland residents experienced maximum ...

Foundation Frenzy? Cosmetic Catastrophe? Don't Panic - Help is on Hand!

2012-03-20

Ladies don't worry! We all know how hard it is to choose the perfect cosmetic foundation! The markets flooded with products, ranging from mousses to tinted moisturisers, which often overwhelm the customer with choice! But don't fear we have help on hand with our simple foundation guide because we understand that when you are choosing a foundation it's important to go back to basics. Firstly the most important thing to ask when you are looking for a new foundation is not (like everyone thinks it is) whether it will look great and give you a flawless finish but actually ...

BioCompNet: a deep learning workflow enabling automated body composition analysis toward precision management of cardiometabolic disorders

Nonlinear association between systemic immune-inflammation index and in-hospital mortality in critically ill patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and atrial fibrillation: a cross-sectio

Fondazione Telethon announces CHMP positive opinion for Waskyra™, a gene therapy for the treatment of Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome (WAS)

[Press-News.org] 'Look at me' toddlers eager to collaborate and learn
Attention-seeking children's development is fostered by parents who respond favourably, Concordia study finds

'Look at me' toddlers eager to collaborate and learn

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: