The relationship between infants' interest in feedback of self-performed actions with different latency and their parents' temporally contingent behavior

- We tested the relation between parent behavior and infants' interest in their own actions.
- Parents' temporally contingent behavior was analyzed.
- Infants' interest in the feedback of their own actions with different latency was examined.
- Parents' contingent behavior correlated with infants' interest in real-time feedback.

In this study, we asked whether parental contingent behavior and infants' interest in feedback of self-performed actions with different timing are related. Therefore, we observed parents reacting contingently to their infants' behavior and examined the extent to which the infants were interested in real-time visual feedback of their leg movements and delayed visual feedback of their leg movements. Thirty-two parent-infant dyads were tested. Results revealed that the more often parents reacted contingently to their infants' behavior the more infants were interested in the real-time feedback. We concluded that the pattern of parents' contingent behavior influences their infants' interest in immediate effects displayed in the real-time feedback when they are observing displays of their own behavior that differs in latency.