Does Infants' Socially-guided Attention Uniquely Predict Language Development?

dc.contributor.authorWu, Qiongen
dc.contributor.committeechairPanneton, Robin K.en
dc.contributor.committeememberBell, Martha Annen
dc.contributor.committeememberDeater-Deckard, Kirbyen
dc.contributor.committeememberFriedman, Bruce H.en
dc.contributor.committeememberWhite, Susan W.en
dc.contributor.departmentPsychologyen
dc.date.accessioned2015-07-19T06:00:31Zen
dc.date.available2015-07-19T06:00:31Zen
dc.date.issued2014-01-24en
dc.description.abstractThe purpose of this study was to examine whether infants' social attention, as well as their joint attention behaviors uniquely predicted emerging language abilities. This longitudinal study examined attention regulation skills, joint attention behaviors, infants' expressive/receptive language (current), emerging communication abilities at 16- and 17-month-old (time 1); expressive/receptive language (subsequent) at 18- 19-month-old (time 2). Infants' sustained attention was measured by their attention control to a central stimulus in the presence of a distracter competing for their attention. Dynamic human face (upright, inverted) and abstract display with their matched voice tracks were used to separately measure infants' attention regulation to different types of events. Infants' sustained attention was estimated by their latencies away from central stimuli to distracters, as well as their fixation duration and gaze count on central events and distracters. It was found that infants' latency away from the abstract figure toward the distracter was the only variable that significantly negatively predicted current expressive vocabulary. Initiating joint attention was observed to significantly predict infants' abilities in current receptive vocabulary. The emerging language communication ability predicted expressive vocabulary at two times. In addition, infants' fixation and count to the upright speaker's face and eyes contributed significant amount of variance in initiating joint attestation. The fixation and gaze count on the distracter in the upright condition significantly predicted infants' emerging language skills.en
dc.description.degreePh. D.en
dc.format.mediumETDen
dc.identifier.othervt_gsexam:2045en
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10919/54571en
dc.publisherVirginia Techen
dc.rightsIn Copyrighten
dc.rights.urihttp://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/en
dc.subjectAttentionen
dc.subjectsocial attentionen
dc.subjectlanguageen
dc.subjectdistractibilityen
dc.titleDoes Infants' Socially-guided Attention Uniquely Predict Language Development?en
dc.typeDissertationen
thesis.degree.disciplinePsychologyen
thesis.degree.grantorVirginia Polytechnic Institute and State Universityen
thesis.degree.leveldoctoralen
thesis.degree.namePh. D.en

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