Washington: Caregivers whose eyes wander during playtime - due to distractions such as smartphones or other technology - may raise children with shorter attention spans, a new study has warned.
The research is the first to show a direct connection between how long a caregiver looks at an object and how long an infant's attention remains focused on that same object. "The ability of children to sustain attention is known as
a strong indicator for later success in areas such as language acquisition, problem-solving and other key cognitive development milestones," said Chen Yu from Indiana University in the US.
"Caregivers who appear distracted or whose eyes wander a lot while their children play appear to negatively impact infants' burgeoning attention spans during a key stage of development," said Yu. Using head-mounted cameras worn by both caregivers and infants, scientists got a first-person point of view on parents and children playing together in an environment that closely resembled a typical play session at home or day care.
The technology also allowed the parents and children to play with physical toys. A typical eye-tracking study of children would involve manipulating objects on a screen. Caregivers were given no instructions before engaging with children to ensure the psychologists got an unfiltered view of their interactions, researchers said.
Generally, Yu said, caregivers fell into two major groups - those who let the infants direct the course of their play and those who attempted to forcefully guide the infants' interest towards specific toys. "A lot of the parents were really trying too hard. They were trying to show off their parenting skills, holding out toys for their kids and naming the objects," said Yu.
"But when you watch the camera footage, you can actually see the children's eyes wandering to the ceilings or over their parents' shoulders - they are not paying attention at all," he said. The caregivers who were most successful at sustaining the children's attention were those who "let the child lead."
These caregivers waited until they saw the children express interest in a toy and then jumped in to expand that interest by naming the object and encouraging play. In cases where infants and caregivers paid attention to the same object for over 3.6 seconds, the infant's attention lingered 2.3 seconds longer on average on the same object even after the caregiver's gaze turned away, researchers said.
This extra time works out to nearly four times longer compared to infants whose caregivers' attention strayed relatively quickly, researchers said. The shortest attention spans in the study were observed in a third group, in which caregivers displayed extremely low engagement with children while playing, they said.
These distracted caregivers tended to sit back and not play along, or simply look elsewhere during the exercise. The findings were published in the journal Current Biology.
