Joint Attention During Early Mealtimes And The Influence Of Weaning Style

Baby-led weaning is an emerging alternative to traditional complementary feeding that may have beneficial effects for language development. However, little is known about how the parent-child interactional processes that occur during feeding contribute to development. Early feeding interactions may present important opportunities for infants to engage in joint attention, a preverbal communicative skill that is related to early language development, and these dyadic processes may be affected by weaning methods that place differing task demands on the parent and the infant. This study quantifies, for the first time, the amount of joint attention that 6- to 12- month-old infants engage in during mealtimes, and evaluates self-feeding as a predictor of total joint attention and infant-initiated joint attention. Video recordings of infant mealtimes were coded for self-feeding and joint attention, and hierarchical regression was used to evaluate the relationships between self-feeding and joint attention variables, as well as how these relationships change with age. We found significant amounts of joint attention occurring during mealtimes at all ages included in our study. While self-feeding did not predict engagement in total joint attention in our study, we did find that self-feeding was a significant predictor of infant-initiated joint attention. Future research should continue to explore the impacts of feeding practices on language development, as well as the utility of mealtimes for joint attention interventions.