Self-feeding and communicative development during the first two years of life: concurrent and longitudinal associations

Early exposure to a baby-led weaning approach (BLW) encourages infants to actively participate in the feeding process, fostering the development of essential motor skills. By allowing them to manipulate, grasp, and chew a variety of age-appropriate foods, infants exposed to the BLW acquire a greater degree of autonomy in their eating experiences (Rapley, 2005, 2018). This contrasts with the parent-led weaning approach (PLW), where the emphasis on being spoon-fed puréed foods by a parent may limit the opportunities for infants to explore different textures and tastes independently. Notably, the developmental acquisitions in infants’ motor skills may act as catalysts, shaping the caregiver-infant interactions during the daily feeding routines from the beginning of the weaning period and exerting an impact on the emergence of intentional communication by the end of the first year of life (e.g., Iverson, 2021). In the present study, we observed a typical meal of 182 infants when they were 12 months of age, in order to investigate: i) whether infants’ more advanced independent eating skills were associated with their emerging gestural and vocal communication, and ii) the relations between mothers’ child-directed speech during the meal and infants’ gestural and vocal production. We also examined the potential cascading effects of independent eating skills and mothers’ child-directed speech on infants’ language development at 18 and 24 months of age. Building on prior research (Camaioni et al., 2003; Weisleder & Fernald, 2013), we developed a coding scheme in order to capture infants’ gestures and vocalizations, as well as all utterances and words directed towards the infants by individuals present during the meal. In addition to the observational measurements, mothers completed: i) a socio-demographic questionnaire, encompassing potentially relevant information, such as infants’ age and gender, duration of exclusive breastfeeding, and the use of the pacifier, ii) the Italian short form of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (Words and Gestures) (SF-MCDI) to assess comprehension, productive vocabulary, and gestures (Caselli et al., 2015), and iii) the Developmental ProfileTM 3 (Alpern 2007), from which we derived a fine-motor skill score. When infants were 18 and 24 months-old, mothers completed again the SF-MCDI (Words and Sentences). Regression analyses revealed that infants who engaged in self-feeding more frequently during meals at 12 months were also more likely to exhibit deictic gestures (i.e., pointing, showing, offering, requesting and taking) and to produce a greater number of vocalizations than infants who self-fed less often. Moreover, we found that the proportion of mothers’ child-directed utterances was positively associated with infants’ production of gestures, vocalizations, and words. We also found that infants’ fine-motor skills were positively related to their comprehension and gestures production at 12 months. Finally, longitudinal analyses showed that infants’ self-feeding at 12 months was positively associated with their ability to produce sentences at 24 months. Overall, these findings underscore the interplay between self-feeding, maternal child-directed speech, and the trajectory of infants’ communicative development. The study highlights the importance of considering mealtime practices and interactions, as well as motor skill development, in understanding and promoting early language acquisition.