Parents who turn off audible notifications on their devices have the best chance of expanding their child's vocabulary, according to a new study by the University of Auckland's School of Psychology.

Parents who turn off audible notifications on their devices have the best chance of expanding their child's vocabulary, according to a new study by the University of Auckland's School of Psychology.

People might assume the number of times parents check the phone or the time spent talking on it that would be more problematic, yet audible notifications seem to be the most disruptive to child development, says doctoral candidate Maria Corkin, who led the study.

Listen to the interview

Corkin's research team were interested in whether a parent's mobile phone use could affect their infant even when they weren't actively using it - and whether this might be associated with the size of their vocabulary.

For their experiment, parents and 20-month old infants were recorded playing with things like jigsaws and stacking cups at the university's Early Learning Lab. Later, the parents were sent questionnaires about their own mobile phone use and general screen use in the family.

Every parent-child play interaction was assessed and coded on four dimensions - Responsiveness, Coordinated joint attention, Directiveness and Scaffolding:

Responsiveness

" showing awareness of the child's activities and cues and following the child's leads in the activities and responding appropriately and in a timely manner - within a few seconds of the child giving a cue for the parent's attention."

Coordinated joint attention

"That's where the parent and child are looking at each other and focused on each other and the same activity at the same time."

Directiveness

" parents are leading the interactions... leading the child's attention away from what they're doing to what the parents want them to do. It's not responsive to the child's cues. The parent is directing the child's focus to something else."

Scaffolding

" parents are using strategies that can support children's learning, such as asking questions or giving feedback, creating opportunities for a child to practice a skill."

Parents who typically received a higher number of audible notifications per hour were found to be less responsive and more directive towards their children and "scaffolded" them less often, Corkin says…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details