Abstract
Objective
To examine associations of maternal mobile device use with the frequency of mother–child
interactions during a structured laboratory task.
Methods
Participants included 225 low-income mother–child pairs. When children were ∼6 years
old, dyads were videotaped during a standardized protocol in order to characterize
how mothers and children interacted when asked to try familiar and unfamiliar foods.
From videotapes, we dichotomized mothers on the basis of whether or not they spontaneously
used a mobile device, and we counted maternal verbal and nonverbal prompts toward
the child. We used multivariate Poisson regression to study associations of device
use with eating prompt frequency for different foods.
Results
Mothers were an average of 31.3 (SD 7.1) years old, and 28.0% were of Hispanic/nonwhite
race/ethnicity. During the protocol, 23.1% of mothers spontaneously used a mobile
device. Device use was not associated with any maternal characteristics, including
age, race/ethnicity, education, depressive symptoms, or parenting style. Mothers with
device use initiated fewer verbal (relative rate 0.80; 95% confidence interval 0.63,
1.03) and nonverbal (0.61; 0.39, 0.96) interactions with their children than mothers
who did not use a device, when averaged across all foods. This association was strongest
during introduction of halva, the most unfamiliar food (0.67; 0.48, 0.93 for verbal
and 0.42; 0.20, 0.89 for nonverbal interactions).
Conclusions
Mobile device use was common and associated with fewer interactions with children
during a structured interaction task, particularly nonverbal interactions and during
introduction of an unfamiliar food. More research is needed to understand how device
use affects parent–child engagement in naturalistic contexts.
Keywords
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Article Info
Publication History
Published online: November 21, 2014
Accepted:
October 1,
2014
Received:
May 21,
2014
Footnotes
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Identification
Copyright
© 2015 Academic Pediatric Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
