TY - JOUR

T1 - Individual Differences in Infants' Speech Segmentation Performance

T2 - The Role of Mother-Infant Cardiac Synchrony

AU - Vanoncini, Monica

AU - Kayhan, Ezgi

AU - Elsner, Birgit

AU - Wunderwald, Moritz

AU - Wallot, Sebastian

AU - Hoehl, Stefanie

AU - Boll-Avetisyan, Natalie

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2025 The Author(s). Infancy published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of International Congress of Infant Studies.

PY - 2025/3/1

Y1 - 2025/3/1

N2 - Caregiver-infant coregulation is an early form of communication. This study investigated whether mother-infant biological coregulation is associated with 9-month-olds’ word segmentation performance, a crucial milestone predicting language development. We hypothesized that coregulation would relate with infants' word segmentation performance. Additionally, we examined whether this relationship is influenced by the caregiving environment (i.e., parental reflective functioning) and the infant's emotional state (i.e., positive affect). Coregulation was investigated via cardiac synchrony in 28 nine-month-old infants (16 females) during a 5-min free-play with their German-speaking mothers. Cardiac synchrony was measured through Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (RSA), employing Recurrence Quantification Analysis to evaluate dyadic coupling (i.e., Recurrence Rate) and dyadic predictability (i.e., Entropy). Infants' word segmentation was measured with an eye-tracking central-fixation procedure. A stepwise regression revealed that higher dyadic coupling, but not predictability, of the dyads' RSA was associated with infants looking longer toward the screen when listening to novel as compared to familiar test words, indicating advanced word segmentation performance (Cohen's d = 0.25). Moreover, cardiac synchrony correlated positively with maternal sensitivity to their infant's mental states, but not with the infant's positive affect. These results suggest that caregiver-infant biological coregulation may play a foundational role in language acquisition.

AB - Caregiver-infant coregulation is an early form of communication. This study investigated whether mother-infant biological coregulation is associated with 9-month-olds’ word segmentation performance, a crucial milestone predicting language development. We hypothesized that coregulation would relate with infants' word segmentation performance. Additionally, we examined whether this relationship is influenced by the caregiving environment (i.e., parental reflective functioning) and the infant's emotional state (i.e., positive affect). Coregulation was investigated via cardiac synchrony in 28 nine-month-old infants (16 females) during a 5-min free-play with their German-speaking mothers. Cardiac synchrony was measured through Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (RSA), employing Recurrence Quantification Analysis to evaluate dyadic coupling (i.e., Recurrence Rate) and dyadic predictability (i.e., Entropy). Infants' word segmentation was measured with an eye-tracking central-fixation procedure. A stepwise regression revealed that higher dyadic coupling, but not predictability, of the dyads' RSA was associated with infants looking longer toward the screen when listening to novel as compared to familiar test words, indicating advanced word segmentation performance (Cohen's d = 0.25). Moreover, cardiac synchrony correlated positively with maternal sensitivity to their infant's mental states, but not with the infant's positive affect. These results suggest that caregiver-infant biological coregulation may play a foundational role in language acquisition.

KW - cardiac synchrony

KW - infant word segmentation

KW - mother-child interactions

KW - recurrence quantification analysis

KW - respiratory sinus arrhythmia

KW - Psychology

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=105002605178&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1111/infa.70020

DO - 10.1111/infa.70020

M3 - Journal articles

C2 - 40220272

AN - SCOPUS:105002605178

VL - 30

JO - Infancy

JF - Infancy

SN - 1525-0008

IS - 2

M1 - e70020

ER -