| Budget Amount *help |
¥1,700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,700,000)
Fiscal Year 2004: ¥800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000)
Fiscal Year 2003: ¥900,000 (Direct Cost: ¥900,000)
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| Research Abstract |
To explore mother-infant interaction and infant cognitive development (play & language), mother-infant play was observed from 5 to 24 months of age at their homes longitudinally. Results : 1)Maternal responsiveness in mother-infant interaction was 66-79%, and responsiveness was correlated with a factor, "confidence and satisfaction in child rearing" in self-perception of the parental role. 2)In infant joint attention, the duration of passive joint attention was longer than coordinated joint attention, and the average of duration nearly changed through all ages. Coordinated joint attention emerged at 7 months, and the duration increased with age. Especially, coordinated joint attention showed remarkable increase between 13 and 15 months and between 18 and 20 months. 3)In infant play, infants showed "mouthing" and "banging" play frequently until 11 months of age, and after that, those plays were likely to decrease. In contrast to them, functional play and appropriate combinatorial activity increased from 13 months. Moreover, symbolic play emerged at 9 months and increased with age. Especially, symbolic play remarkably increased between 15 and 18 months. 4)In language development, infants acquired single words about 249 words on an average at 24 months. However, some infant acquired 470 words and some infant acquired only 12 words at 24 months. It clearly showed individual differences in productive vocabulary size. Vocabulary size increased sharply from 18 to 20 months. With respect to different words, infants uttered more verb/action word than others at 24 months, and the name of food and quality/attribution word followed in that order. At 5 and 20 months, mothers were asked about childrearing and themselves using questionnaires. Mothers' spent a lot of time with their infants, and they desire that fathers spend more time with their infants.
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