Conversational time patterns and mutual influence in parent-child interactions: a time series approach

Mutual influencing processes are assumed to be the basic building blocks in establishing parent-child bonding and in influencing cognitive and language behavior. A study by Jasnow and Feldstein (1986) revealed that, within the temporal domain of speech, preverbal (9-month-old) infants and their mothers exhibit a pattern of mutual influence (attunement) in their average durations of switching pauses. The general purpose of this research was to extend those findings to children with higher verbal functioning. In addition, parent and child genders, nature of the interaction, and specific aspects of parents' personalities, expressiveness, and instrumentality were considered. Each parent interacted with their 4- or 5-year-old son or daughter in each of two conversations--unstructured (social conversation) and structured (task activity). Conversations were processed by an automated computer system yielding objective measure of turns, vocalizations, pauses, and switching-pause durations. To examine interspeaker influence of attunement of temporal speech patterns, "influence coefficients" were computer for each speaker on a "turn-by-turn" basis using time series regression. Analysis of these coefficients revealed that: (1) Mutual influence is most evident with switching-pause duration. (2) Structure in the conversation (as defined by the task or parental instrumentality) seems to facilitate attunement for vocalization and switching pause duration. (3) Attunement with girls seems to occur equally well with both parents, while boys exhibit a style of temporal patterning influence which suggests greater identification with the father. (4) Expressiveness seems to facilitate attunement to the child's switching-pause duration.