An Exploratory Study Of Nonverbal Behaviors In Parent Son Interactions

This is the first edited volume in the communication field to examine parent-child interaction. It creates a framework for future research in this growing area -- family communication, and more specifically, parent-child communication -- and also suggests new areas of communication research among parents and children -- cultural, work-related, taboo topics, family sex discussions, conflict, and abuse. Chapter authors provide thorough coverage of theoretical approaches, new methods, and emerging contexts including lesbian/gay parent-child relationships. In so doing, they bring a communication perspective to enduring problems of discipline, adolescent conflict, and physical child abuse. The text highlights various methodological approaches -- both quantitative and qualitative -- including conversation analysis, grounded theory, participant-observation, and phenomenological interviewing of children. It also introduces and surveys various theoretical approaches -- general systems, developmental, cultural, and intergenerational transmission.

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.

Full of research backed advice, examples, and reflection questions throughout, this book is for fathers seeking to build their parenting identity while effectively supporting their child from conception to adulthood. Covering topics such as opportunities for fathers to connect to their children during each stage of development, occasions for men to grow and develop when they become fathers, advice for healthy and successful coparenting, as well as how to support a positive father-child relationship, this book provides important answers to questions that fathers frequently ask about parenting. Fathers and Children Together is a must read for fathers aspiring to create strong connections to their children, as well as all parents, practitioners, and students in disciplines such as psychology, human development and family studies, parent education, and social work.

Powerful and economic sensors such as high definition cameras and corresponding recognition software have become readily available, e.g. for face and motion recognition. However, designing user interfaces for robots, phones and computers that facilitate a seamless, intuitive, and apparently effortless communication as between humans is still highly challenging. This has shifted the focus from developing ever faster and higher resolution sensors to interpreting available sensor data for understanding social signals and recognising users' intentions. Psychologists, Ethnologists, Linguists and Sociologists have investigated social behaviour in human-human interaction. But their findings are rarely applied in the human-robot interaction domain. Instead, robot designers tend to rely on either proof-of-concept or machine learning based methods. In proving the concept, developers effectively demonstrate that users are able to adapt to robots deployed in the public space. Typically, an initial period of collecting human-robot interaction data is used for identifying frequently occurring problems. These are then addressed by adjusting the interaction policies on the basis of the collected data. However, the updated policies are strongly biased by the initial design of the robot and might not reflect natural, spontaneous user behaviour. In the machine learning approach, learning algorithms are used for finding a mapping between the sensor data space and a hypothesised or estimated set of intentions. However, this brute-force approach ignores the possibility that some signals or modalities are superfluous or even disruptive in intention recognition. Furthermore, this method is very sensitive to peculiarities of the training data. In sum, both methods cannot reliably support natural interaction as they crucially depend on an accurate model of human intention recognition. Therefore, approaches to social robotics from engineers and computer scientists urgently have to be informed by studies of intention recognition in natural human-human communication. Combining the investigation of natural human behaviour and the design of computer and robot interfaces can significantly improve the usability of modern technology. For example, robots will be easier to use by a broad public if they can interpret the social signals that users spontaneously produce for conveying their intentions anyway. By correctly identifying and even anticipating the user's intention, the user will perceive that the system truly understands her/his needs. Vice versa, if a robot produces socially appropriate signals, it will be easier for its users to understand the robot's intentions. Furthermore, studying natural behaviour as a basis for controlling robots and other devices results in greater robustness, responsiveness and approachability. Thus, we welcome submissions that (a) investigate how relevant social signals can be identified in human behaviour, (b) investigate the meaning of social signals in a specific context or task, (c) identify the minimal set of intentions for describing a context or task, (d) demonstrate how insights from the analysis of social behaviour can improve a robot's capabilities, or (e) demonstrate how a robot can make itself more understandable to the user by producing more human-like social signals.