Developmental Psychobiology. 2020;00:1–10. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/dev   |  1
© 2020 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
1 | INTRODUCTION
The activities of daily life revolve around stable clusters of skills 
that have been selected within a given populated environment 
(Reed, 1996). Self-feeding—the ability independently to feed one-
self with a utensil—is among the important daily skills in early 
development (Babik, Movva, Cunha, & Lobo, 2019; Connolly & 
Dalgleish, 1989; Gesell & Ilg, 1937). How do children learn, for ex-
ample, to use a spoon? An ordinary spoon affords many actions, 
many of which (such as banging or throwing) are not related to the 
spoon's intended use as a tool to aid the ingestion of food (e.g., Ye, 
Cardwell, & Mark, 2009). Nonaka and Goldfield (2018) reported that 
toddlers explored different ways to hold spoons, and also exhibited 
considerable variability in the purpose for which spoons were used 
during mealtime. Examples included mouthing a spoon, running their 
fingers over it, banging two spoons against each other, bouncing the 
end of a spoon on the table, twisting a spoon with fingers, passing 
it from hand to hand, rolling it on a surface, shaking, dropping, and 
throwing the spoon, as well as using the spoon to probe or poke 
at food, loading food onto, transporting food to another place, and 
using the spoon to smear food onto a surface. These examples il-
lustrate the many actions opportunities, or affordances, that are 
available when children encounter with spoons. As will be obvious 
to the adult reader, most of these affordances are irrelevant to or 
even counterproductive with respect to eating a meal. How does 
the child transition from exploration of generic spoon-related affor-
dances to those affordances that optimize food ingestion, that is, to 
affordances that are appropriate at mealtimes?
We examined this question in relation to the fact that toddlers 
are rarely alone when they eat; typically, caregivers are present. 
Thus, for toddlers, mealtime comprises a social interaction. The so-
cial nature of mealtime means that toddlers have the opportunity 
to use their interaction with the caregiver to learn about spoon use. 
In particular, caregivers may provide information about how the 
Received: 16 February 2020  |  Revised: 21 March 2020  |  Accepted: 1 April 2020
DOI: 10.1002/dev.21978  
R E S E A R C H  A R T I C L E
Social interaction in the emergence of toddler’s mealtime spoon use
Tetsushi Nonaka1 |   Thomas A. Stoffregen2
1Graduate School of Human Development and Environment, Kobe University, Kobe, Japan
2School of Kinesiology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
CorrespondenceTetsushi Nonaka, Graduate School of Human Development and Environment, Kobe University, Tsurukabuto 3-11, Nada-ku, Kobe 6578501, Japan.Email: tetsushi@people.kobe-u.ac.jp
Funding informationJapan Society for the Promotion of Science, Grant/Award Number: JP18K12013 and JP18KT0079
Abstract
The use of a spoon for eating is among the important daily skills in early develop-
ment. The article provides an analysis of how caregiver–toddler interactions guides 
the attention of toddlers who were first learning how to use a spoon to spoon-re-
lated action opportunities that were relevant to the mealtime context. Our analysis 
revealed several related results. First, caregivers often manipulated objects on the 
table (i.e., food and dishes), and toddlers were more likely than chance to use their 
spoon to contact food immediately after watching these caregiver manipulations. 
Second, toddlers looked more often at the caregiver's hand than at their face. Third, 
toddlers tended to look at the caregiver's hand when the caregiver was manipulating 
objects on the table, and after these looks, toddlers were more likely than chance to 
contact food with their spoon. Finally, the toddlers’ choices about when to look at 
the caregiver were influenced by their own behavior, as if they wanted to know how 
the caregiver would react to what they had done. We discuss these results in terms 
of the learning of socially promoted action opportunities for meal-related spoon use.
K E Y W O R D S
affordances, caregiver–child interactions, coordinated attention, education of attention, field 
of promoted action
2  |    
NONAKA ANd STOFFREGEN
toddler can learn to distinguish “what I can do with a spoon” from 
“what I should do with a spoon.” In daily life, multiple affordances 
always exist (Wagman, Caputo, & Stoffregen, 2016), and selec-
tion from among available affordances in a given situation often is 
constrained by social norms (Heras-Escribano & de Pinedo, 2016; 
Rietveld, 2008).
1.1 | Social interaction and skill development
For humans, situated skill learning commonly involves multiple indi-
viduals and social norms (Gibson, 1950; Mauss, 1973; Valsiner, 1984, 
1997; Reed, 1993). Recent research indicates that coordinated social 
interaction between young children and caregivers has a founda-
tional role in the development of language, cognitive, and motor skills, 
helping to create developmental cascades into different domains of 
function (Adolph, 2019; Chen, Castellanos, Yu, & Houston, 2019; 
Corbetta, Williams, & Haynes, 2016). Yet, the interpersonal ecology 
of young children's development of daily skills is so commonplace 
that its significance seems yet to be fully appreciated. Nonaka and 
Goldfield (2018) reported that in the early stage of self-feeding at 
home, mothers carefully controlled what was within reach of young 
children, thereby creating a spatial arrangement within which playful 
behavior was tolerated; what Nonaka and Goldfield called a field of 
safe exploration. In addition, caregivers sometimes selectively varied 
the child's set of action opportunities, by changing the arrangement 
of objects on the table. Such subtle interactions, in which caregivers 
shaped the child's spontaneous activities, have received little atten-
tion from researchers, possibly because they are difficult to manipu-
late experimentally.
To understand how young children become attuned to a set of 
action opportunities relevant to a specific situation, an account is 
needed of how young children and caregivers coordinate their at-
tention toward these relevant aspect of the situation in the setting 
where such interactions actually take place (Boyer & Bril, 2001; 
Zukow-Goldring, 1997). Recently, a growing body of evidence sug-
gests that manual actions on objects are critical to the establishment 
of joint attention (Rader & Zukow-Goldring, 2010; Yu & Smith, 2013, 
2017). In one study in an experimental object play setting, for ex-
ample, Yu and Smith (2017) found that both toddlers and parents 
attended to their partner's object manipulations, and joint attention 
emerged through the coordination of gaze with manual actions on 
objects, indicating that such coordinated attention by way of man-
ual actions on objects characterizes parent–infant everyday inter-
action. In the context of the development of self-feeding skill, one 
possibility is that manual actions by caregivers on tabletop objects 
previously reported by Nonaka and Goldfield (2018) may have a di-
rect consequence in the subsequent selection of spoon-using action 
by novice spoon feeders. It is also possible that such interactions, if 
repeated, may help young children to become attuned to a set of ac-
tion opportunities relevant to a specific context of mealtime. By this 
line of reasoning, the assistive action by caregivers observed may 
predict the subsequent selection of spoon-using action by novice 
spoon feeders. Another possibility is that attention paid by novice 
spoon feeders to caregivers during mealtime may exhibit some kind 
of lawful relation with their spontaneous selection of spoon-using 
action. Investigations into these subtle, non-obvious interactions 
between caregivers and novice spoon feeders that occur in a natural 
environment may deepen our understanding of the significance of a 
populated environment in learning to use a utensil for self-feeding.
1.2 | Current study
Using an observational methodology, we explored relations be-
tween the actions of caregivers and the actions of novice feeders’ 
as children learned to use a spoon for food ingestion. We examined 
video recordings of 12 child–caregiver dyads at lunchtime in a natu-
ral setting. Our aim was to gain insight into the three-term relation 
between caregivers’ actions, toddlers’ gaze at caregivers, and tod-
dlers’ spoon use. We were interested in two types of social inter-
actions. First, we asked whether different forms of spoon use (i.e., 
food-oriented or not) by novice spoon feeders were influenced by 
the actions of a caregiver (speech, touching the child, or touching 
an object). Second, we asked whether toddlers’ spoon use choices 
were related to their prior or concurrent choices about whether to 
look at the hands or face of the caregiver. Using a longitudinal da-
tabase of video recordings, we focused on the month in which the 
first successful independent spoon feeding was observed. In this 
period, children are capable of using a spoon to transport food to 
the mouth, but still display variable forms of spoon use. We asked 
how caregiver–toddler interactions might affect the likelihood that 
toddlers would focus their actions on meal-relevant affordances of 
spoons, and away from meal-irrelevant affordances. We predicted 
that novice spoon feeders would look at caregivers’ manual actions 
on tabletop objects. Thereby, we predicted that caregivers’ actions 
on objects would be associated with an increased likelihood that 
toddlers would actualize meal-relevant affordances of spoons.
2 | METHOD
2.1 | Participants
Twelve toddlers (eight females, four males) and four adult female car-
egivers participated in the study. The mean age of the toddlers was 
10.44 months at the beginning of observation and 20.01 months at 
the end of the observation period (SD = 2.62 months). All were en-
rolled in or worked at a day-care center (the Yamaboushi Nursery 
Center, Hyogo, Japan). Data were extracted from video recordings of 
toddlers as they ate lunch with the assistance of a caregiver. These 
recordings were made longitudinally over a period of 10 months 
from June 2017 to March 2018. At the beginning of observation, 
none of the toddlers used a spoon during feeding. From our obser-
vations across 10 months, we identified the date of the onset of in-
dependent spoon feeding, the details of which are described in the 
    |  3
NONAKA ANd STOFFREGEN
subsequent section. The mean age of the toddlers at the onset of in-
dependent spoon feeding was 17.88 months (SD = 1.09 months). All 
parents and caregivers gave informed consent prior to being filmed.
2.2 | Procedure
A researcher visited the nursery monthly, placing digital video cameras 
in front of each table so as to record the toddler eating a meal with 
the caregiver. To avoid distraction, the researcher left the room before 
the toddlers came in. The toddler sat in his or her usual chair facing a 
table, and the caregiver sat around the corner of the same table next 
to the toddler (Figure 1). Each month, lunchtimes of four consecutive 
days were videotaped. Each child was observed at least 2 days within 
the same week for every month. Using the collected video data, the 
onset of independent spoon feeding was identified for each toddler. 
Independent spoon feeding was defined as the multiple occurrence of 
food ingestion with a spoon independently manipulated by the toddler. 
This onset was not meant to be the strictly defined moment after which 
the toddlers can eat with a spoon independently. Rather, the onset 
was used to extract the situation of early use of spoons in self-feeding 
where the toddlers exhibit still unskilled and variable level of perfor-
mance. We also note that since there was 1-month interval between 
observations, there could have been a time difference up to 1 month 
between the observed and the actual instance of first independent 
food ingestion using a spoon. In this period, the child sometimes was 
fed by the caregiver (using the caregiver's spoon), and sometimes was 
fed independently, through finger feeding, or through the child's use 
of their own spoon. Caregivers held a spoon, which they used either 
to transport food from a larger dish to a small dish in front of the child, 
or directly to feed the child (Figure 1). In addition, caregivers used their 
spoon to manipulate the contents of the child's dish.
FI G U R E 1 Some examples of toddler's spoon-using action and caregiver's assistive action. (a) Toddler's spontaneous food contact during caregiver's action on the dish on the table. (b) Toddler's spontaneous food contact during caregiver's action on the food in the dish. (c) Toddler's food ingestion assisted by caregiver's action on the toddler's elbow. (d) Toddler's playful spoon use not oriented to food
(a)(b)
(d)(c)
4  |    
NONAKA ANd STOFFREGEN
We selected a single segment of video from each the first two 
meals after the onset of independent spoon feeding. The beginning 
of self-feeding typically is characterized by unexpected events and 
interruptions. To ensure that the situation was comparable across 
children, we selected feeding bouts that satisfied three conditions: 
(a) the toddler held their own spoon, (b) the caregiver was present 
at the table, and (c) less than 1 min passed between instances of the 
toddler using their spoon to contact the food. From each meal, we 
selected the longest bout that satisfied above criteria. Overall, we 
analyzed 24 video clips that met all three criteria. The duration of 
these clips was 3.82 ± 2.03 min.
2.3 | Data coding
Caregiver–toddler interactions were coded from video clips re-
corded with one frontally oriented camera. All coding from the 
video clips was completed in frame-by-frame mode using a video 
coding software Datavyu (www.datav yu.org) that allows for frame 
by frame analysis of the timing of onsets and offsets of specific 
behaviors (i.e., 30 frames per second were visible and available 
for coding). A primary coder scored (1) the toddler's spoon-using 
actions, (2) the caregiver's assistive actions, and (3) the toddler's 
visual attention (gaze) to the caregiver. For the toddler's spoon-
using action (Figure 1), the coder noted the onset and offset of 
each of three types of episodes: (1a) toddler's spontaneous use 
of a spoon to contact food, (1b) toddler's use of their spoon to 
ingest food (emptying food from the spoon into the mouth), or (1c) 
playful spoon use (e.g., the toddler hitting the dish with a spoon). 
The toddler's spontaneous use of a spoon to contact food could 
lead to either food ingestion or to other actions. Taking this fact 
into account, we operationally defined the offset of the toddler's 
spontaneous use of a spoon to contact food in either of two ways; 
when the toddler's spoon ceased to be in contact with food (in 
the cases where food ingestion did not follow), or at the moment 
just prior to food ingestion (in the cases where food ingestion fol-
lowed). For the caregiver's assistive action (Figure 1), the coder 
noted three types of episodes: (2a) the caregiver's movement of 
items on the table (e.g., food, dish), (2b) the caregiver's actions 
touching the toddler, or (2c) the caregiver's vocalization addressed 
to the child. We did not analyze the contents of the caregiver's 
vocalizations, but only the onset and offset of these vocalizations. 
Finally, for the toddler's visual attention (gaze) to the caregiver, 
the coder noted the onset and offset of two types of episodes: 
(3a) the toddler's eyes were directed at the face of the caregiver, 
and (3b) the toddler's eyes were directed at the hand of the car-
egiver including anything held in the caregiver's hand. When the 
child's eyes were not directed at the face or hand of the caregiver 
but were directed elsewhere (e.g., other objects on the table), the 
coder simply noted “other.” The “other” category was not ana-
lyzed. A second researcher independently coded 25% of the time-
segmented data. Between coders, the agreement was above 90%. 
Kappa inter-observer reliabilities ranged from 0.86 to 0.96. For 
each coded video segment, we calculated the percentage of the 
total duration of each behavior (% time) by dividing the total dura-
tion of each behavior by the duration of the video segment, the 
mean duration of each occurrence of the behavior, and the mean 
rate of food ingestion per minute.
2.4 | Data analysis
The time stamped raw coded data were exported from Datavyu to 
Generalized Sequential Querier (GSEQ; Bakeman & Quera, 2011). 
The sequential analyses were used to explore the following spe-
cific questions concerning the temporal contingencies between 
the child's spoon use, the caregiver's assistive action, and the tod-
dler's gaze at the caregiver. A previous study found that when the 
toddlers started using spoons in self feeding at home, mothers 
frequently steady dish while the toddlers were touching food with 
a spoon (Nonaka & Goldfield, 2018). The study also found that 
the caregivers often adjust the position of the bowl on the table, 
or adjust the layout of food on the dish so in such a way to invite 
the toddler's food-oriented spoon use. To capture the immediate 
effects of the caregiver's assistance on the toddler's spoon-using 
behavior, we examined the toddler's spoon use during or immedi-
ately after the caregiver's assistive action. Specifically, we tested 
(a) how much more or less likely compared to chance the onset 
time of the toddler's spontaneous spoon use (either food contact 
or other playful use) occurred during or immediately after the 
caregiver's assistive actions defined above. Next, we looked into 
where the toddlers were directing their gaze when the caregivers 
were assisting the toddlers in one way or another; and tested (b) 
how much more or less likely compared chance the toddlers looked 
at caregivers’ hand or face during the caregiver's assistive actions 
defined above. In addition, we further looked into the sequential 
relation between the toddler's gaze directed at the caregiver and 
the spoon-using actions by the toddler. Specifically, we tested (c) 
how much more or less likely compared to chance the onset time 
of the toddler's spontaneous spoon use (either food contact or 
other playful use) occurred immediately after the toddler looked 
at the hand or the face of the caregiver; and (d) how much more or 
less likely compared to chance the onset time of the toddler's gaze 
directed at the caregiver occurred immediately after the child's 
food contact with a spoon, food ingestion with a spoon, or other 
playful spoon use. In the present analysis, we considered the ac-
tion response that occurred within the time window of 2 s after 
the preceding action as the immediate action response. Thereby, 
for the temporal contingencies between the child's spoon use and 
the caregiver's assistive action, we counted the toddler's spoon 
use that occurred during or 2 s after the caregiver's assistive 
action. The choice of the time interval is based on a number of 
studies of human interactions which have found sensible and in-
terpretable results with 2- to 5-s windows (e.g., Bakeman & Quera, 
2011; Goldstein & Schwade, 2008; Tamis-LeMonda, Kuchirko, & 
Tafuro, 2013).
    |  5
NONAKA ANd STOFFREGEN
For each of these sequences, we first created two-dimensional 
contingency tables. The rows of the contingency tables were labeled 
with given (or preceding) actions, while the columns were labeled 
with response (or following) actions, as defined above. Accordingly, 
in these tables, each cell contained the frequency of the joint oc-
currence of given and response actions. Then, the observed joint 
frequencies, expected frequency by chance, and associated z-scores 
computed based on the difference between observed and expected 
joint frequencies were generated by GSEQ (Figure 2). The expected 
frequency for a cell in a contingency table is the probability of its 
response (column) action (pc in Figure 2, the base rate of the re-
sponse action) multiplied by the frequency of its given (row) action. 
The z-score reflects the degree to which the observed frequency of 
each sequence differs from expected frequency by chance. In other 
words, z-score reflects the degree to which one action occurred (or 
not) as a condition of another action, taking into consideration the 
base rate of the actions in the sequence (pc and pr in Figure 2). In 
doing so, the z-score “controls” for the total number of occurrences 
for each behavior and allows for the probability values to be reason-
ably assessed. The z-score is positive if the observed is greater than 
chance and negative if the observed is less than chance. If there is 
no association between given and response actions, then a z-scores 
would be distributed approximately normally with a mean of 0 and 
variance equal 1. Overall, a large z-score indicates a greater than ex-
pected occurrence (relative to chance) of that sequence (Bakeman & 
Quera, 2011).
To compare the occurrence of sequences with chance, the prob-
abilities of each sequence (i.e., individual z-scores obtained for the 
24 meals from 12 participants) were used as dependent variables 
in a random-effects model which treats the participant effects as 
random variations around a population mean with a single fixed 
effects of intercept. In this random-effects model, the intercept 
represents the estimate of mean z-score across the population 
which takes into account the correlation between observations 
made on the same child. We then tested whether the intercept was 
statistically different from zero by the analysis of variance using the 
R package nlme (Pinheiro & Bates, 2019). If the occurrence of the 
response action was not related to the occurrence of the preceding 
action, the mean z-score would hover around 0 and therefore not 
differ from 0. In addition, we computed 95% bootstrap confidence 
intervals and presented them in the corresponding figures, using 
the bias-corrected and accelerated (BCa) method (based on 1,000 
bootstrap samples) which has been shown to be robust even when 
the distribution deviates from normality in small samples (Efron & 
Tibshirani, 1986). We computed the odds ratio of joint occurrence 
measured in percent time (i.e., rescaled time whose maximum time 
set to 100) between caregivers’ action and toddlers’ gaze at care-
givers as the ratio between the likelihood that toddlers gazed at the 
caregiver while the caregiver was engaged in certain actions versus 
the likelihood that toddlers gazed at the caregiver while the caregiver 
was no engaged in those actions. In order to compare the difference 
in likelihood of toddlers’ gaze between with and without caregivers’ 
actions, Yule's Q static, an algebraic transformation of odds ratio 
that varies from −1 to +1 with 0 indicating no effect (Bakeman & 
Quera, 2011), was computed for each individual meal. Using the ran-
dom-effects model with participant effects as random effects, we 
then tested whether the estimated intercept of the model (i.e., the 
estimated overall mean) was statistically different from zero by an 
analysis of variance. In all the analyses, if one of the actions which 
defines the joint occurrence of actions did not occur, we treated the 
value of the associated index (such as z-score or Yule's Q) as missing. 
For inferential tests the criterion alpha was 0.05.
3 | RESULTS
3.1 | Descriptive statistics for toddler and caregiver actions
Descriptive statistics for the toddler and caregiver actions as well as 
correlations between each action and children's age are presented 
in Table 1. On average, the children began using a spoon to eat at 
17.88 months of age (SD = 1.09 months). As mentioned before, this is 
the mean age of the toddlers at which the data were extracted for the 
subsequent analysis. In the segments extracted for observation (see 
Procedure for extraction criteria), the toddlers contacted the food with 
a spoon 30.67% of the time. The mean duration of each occurrence of 
food contact with a spoon was 5.40 s. Toddlers used the spoon play-
fully (e.g., hitting the dish with a spoon and mouthing the end of the 
spoon) 8.37% of the time. Playful spoon use was negatively correlated 
with age, indicating that playful spoon use occurred less for older chil-
dren compared to younger children. The mean duration of each occur-
rence of non-feeding spoon use was 3.08 s. The caregiver acted on 
the objects on the table (e.g., putting food into the dish and adjusting 
the position of the dish on the table), 37.5% of the time. The caregiv-
ers acted on the toddler's body somewhat less frequently (13.38% of 
the time). The duration of the caregiver's action on the objects on the 
table exhibited a significantly positive correlation with toddler's age. 
FI G U R E 2 Definitions for contingency table indices and statistics (Bakeman & Quera, 2011)
R number of rows (givens) C number of columns (responses) observed joint frequency r-th row and c-th column of a  table 
 sum of the counts in the c-th column 
 sum of the counts in the r-th row N number of counts total for the  table 
 probability for the c-th column 
 probability for the r-th column expected frequency, by chance 
z-score (adjusted residual) 
odds ratio
Yule’s Q
 Ac�on response:   Yes No  
Given ac�on: Yes a b  
No c d  
6  |    
NONAKA ANd STOFFREGEN
By contrast, the duration the caregiver's action on toddler's body ex-
hibited a negative correlation with toddler's age. Taken together, these 
two results show that the caregiver acted more on the objects on the 
table but less on the toddler's body for older children compared to 
younger children. The caregiver's vocalization varied considerably from 
meal to meal, but on average occurred 23.87% of the time. The mean 
duration of each occurrence of caregiver's actions was 6.31 s for ac-
tions on objects, 3.98 s for actions on the toddler's body, and 1.46 s for 
vocalizations. The toddlers looked at the caregiver's face only 3.20% of 
the time. In contrast, the toddlers looked at the caregiver's hand, and 
at objects held by the caregiver 19.38% of the time. The percentage of 
duration where toddler's gaze was directed at the caregivers was not 
significantly correlated with age.
3.2 | Caregiver–toddler action sequences
To investigate whether the infant's spoon use was influenced by 
the caregiver's actions, we computed the z-scores of the difference 
between the expected frequency and the observed frequency of 
infant's spoon-using actions during or within 2 s after the caregiv-
er's assistive actions. Following a caregiver's assistive action, the 
toddlers were more likely than chance to contact the food with a 
spoon, and were less likely to play with a spoon (Figure 3). In particu-
lar, an analysis of variance with a random-effects model confirmed 
that toddlers were significantly more likely than chance to contact 
food with the spoon during or after the caregiver's action on the 
objects on the table, as shown by the “objects” bar in the left panel of 
Figure 3, F(1,12) = 14.83, p < 0.01. Toddlers were marginally less likely 
than chance to play with the spoon during or after the caregiver ac-
tion on the toddler's body, as shown by the “body” bar in the right 
panel of Figure 3, F(1,12) = 4.10, p = 0.07. The occurrences of other 
sequences did not differ from chance.
3.3 | Toddler's gaze directed at the caregiver
As we mentioned previously, when looking at caregivers the tod-
dler's gaze was heavily skewed toward the hand of the caregiver. We 
 M (SD)Correlation with age
Onset of self-feeding with a spoon (age in months)17.88 (1.09) months—
Toddler's spoon useSpoon on food% time30.67 (9.98)%n.s.
duration5.40 (1.97) secn.s.
Food ingestionrate/min2.75 (1.06)/minn.s.
Other (playful) use% time8.37 (10.18)%−0.405*
duration3.08 (2.97) secn.s.
Caregiver's actionOn objects% time37.50 (9.07)%0.417**
duration6.31 (2.44) secn.s.
On toddler's body% time13.38 (8.89)%−0.440**
duration3.98 (2.38) secn.s.
Vocalization% time23.87 (24.69)%n.s.
duration1.46 (0.37) secn.s.
Toddler's gaze at caregiverCaregiver's face% time3.20 (3.34)%n.s.
duration1.51 (1.02) secn.s.
Caregiver's hand% time19.38 (9.16)%n.s.
duration3.39 (1.17) secn.s.
*p = 0.05, 
**p < 0.05. 
TA B LE 1 Means and standard deviations (SD) of durations and frequencies of toddler and caregiver behaviors, and their correlations with age
FI G U R E 3 Spoon-using action selected by toddlers during or within 2 s after a caregiver's assistive action. Error bars indicate the bootstrapped 95% confidence intervals
    |  7
NONAKA ANd STOFFREGEN
further looked into what the caregivers were doing when the infants 
looked at them. When all the data were pooled, the odds of the tod-
dler looking at the hand of the caregiver when the caregiver was 
acting on the objects on the table was 8.33 times greater than when 
the caregiver was not acting on the objects on the table (Table 2). 
When Yule's Q static, which transforms the odds ratio to a normal 
distribution, was computed for each observed meal and subjected 
to a random-effects analysis of variance, the toddlers turned out to 
be significantly more likely to look at caregivers’ hand while the car-
egiver was acting on the objects than while the caregiver was not 
acting on the objects (Table 2), F(1,12) = 374.38, p < 0.0001. We also 
examined what the caregiver was doing when the toddler's gaze was 
directed at their face. We found that toddlers were 12.11 times more 
likely to look at the caregiver's face when the caregiver was vocal-
izing than when the caregiver was not vocalizing (Table 2), whose 
statistical significance was confirmed by a random-effects analysis 
of variance on Yule's Q static, computed for each observed clip, 
F(1,12) = 11.29, p < 0.01.
3.4 | Gaze-action sequences in toddlers
We further examined the temporal sequence relating the toddler's 
gaze and their subsequent action choices. First, we identified points 
at which the toddler looked at the caregiver. Then, we examined the 
2 s periods following these looks. Within 2 s of looking at the car-
egiver, did the toddler use the spoon for a feeding-related purpose 
(e.g., to contact the food), or did the toddler use the spoon for a non-
feeding purpose? Figure 4 shows the z-scores associated with the 
toddler's use of the spoon up to 2 s after directing their gaze at the 
caregiver. We found that, after looking at the caregiver's hands, tod-
dlers were more likely than chance to contact food with a spoon, as 
shown by the “hand” bar in the left panel of Figure 4, F(1,12) = 34.37, 
p < 0.0001. When caregivers used their spoon to act on food in 
either of the dishes, the toddlers were often observed to look at 
the caregiver's hand that held the spoon, after which the toddler 
directed their own spoon to the food. Toddlers also were more likely 
than chance to contact food with a spoon after looking at the face of 
the caregiver, as shown by the “face” bar in the left panel of Figure 4, 
F(1,12) = 10.44, p < 0.01. The occurrences of other sequences did not 
differ from chance.
In addition to sequences in which actions followed the tod-
dler's gaze, we also examined the reverse, that is, we examined 
how toddlers own spoon use influenced their subsequent looking 
choices. We examined toddlers’ gaze as a function of the type of pre-
ceding action. Because we were interested how actions influenced 
gaze, in this analysis we considered three types of actions: (a) The 
toddler's use of their spoon to contact food, (b) the toddler's use of 
their spoon for ingestion, and Other. As mentioned in the Method 
section, we operationally defined the offset of “toddler's spoon con-
tact with food” so as not to include food ingestion, so as to distin-
guish the moment of spoon contact with food in the dish from the 
moment when the function of ingestion was fulfilled. After execut-
ing each of these action types, where did the toddler choose to look? 
Table 1 shows that, overall, toddlers more often chose to look at the 
caregiver's hands, rather than looking at their face. By contrast, tod-
dlers made different choices after using their spoon. Up to 2 s after 
using their spoon to ingest food, toddlers were more likely to look at 
the caregiver's face, as shown in the “ingestion” bar in the right panel 
of Figure 5, F(1,12) = 4.82, p < 0.05. Toddlers were also more likely to 
look at the caregiver's face within 2 s after having used their spoon 
for non-feeding purposes, as shown by the “other” bar in the right 
panel of Figure 5, F(1,12) = 4.83, p < 0.05. The occurrences of other 
sequences did not differ from chance. Overall, these results indicate 
that there were some predictable patterns in the timing with which 
the toddler directed their gaze toward the caregiver.
4 | DISCUSSION
In an observational study, we examined video recordings of tod-
dlers eating with the help of a caregiver. We focused on meals in 
which individual toddlers were first learning how to use a spoon, 
that is, learning affordances of spoons that are relevant to eat-
ing. We asked how caregiver–toddler interactions might guide the 
attention of these novice spoon feeders to spoon-related affor-
dances that were relevant to the mealtime context. Our analysis 
TA B LE 2 Joint occurrences in percent time (and odds ratios) between caregiver's action and toddler's gaze at caregiver. Data from all 24 meals were pooled
Caregiver's action
Toddler's gaze directed at
Caregiver's handCaregiver's face
On objects14.82 (8.33)0.53 (0.32)
On body0.74 (0.21)0.29 (0.63)
Vocalization0.65 (0.63)1.07 (12.11)
FI G U R E 4 Spoon-using action selected by toddlers within 2 s after toddlers directed their gaze at the caregiver. Error bars indicate the bootstrapped 95% confidence intervals
8  |    
NONAKA ANd STOFFREGEN
revealed several related results. First, caregivers often manipulated 
objects on the table (i.e., food and dishes), and toddlers were more 
likely (than chance) to use their spoon to contact food immedi-
ately after watching these caregiver manipulations. Second, tod-
dlers looked more often at the caregiver's hand (or spoon-in-hand) 
than at their face. In addition, there were differences in the timing 
of when toddlers chose to look at the caregiver's hand versus her 
face. Third, toddlers tended to look at the caregiver's hand when 
the caregiver was manipulating objects on the table, and after 
these looks, toddlers were more likely than chance to contact food 
with their spoon. Finally, the toddlers’ choices about when to look 
at the caregiver were influenced by their own behavior, as if they 
wanted to know how the caregiver would react to what they had 
done. More often than chance, toddlers chose to look at the car-
egiver's face immediately after executing one of two actions; using 
their spoon to ingest food, or using the spoon in ways that were 
not related to feeding (i.e., play). We discuss these results in terms 
of the learning of socially promoted affordances for meal-related 
spoon use (e.g., Reed, 1996; Veissiere, Constant, Ramstead, Friston, 
& Kirmayer, 2019).
4.1 | Caregiver–toddler interaction and toddlers’ affordance selection
Our results suggest that there was an intricately structured in-
tention-sharing process between novice spoon-feeders and their 
caregivers. Caregivers manipulated objects on the table more fre-
quently than they physically interacted with the toddlers. The re-
sults suggest that caregivers adjusted the layout of objects so as to 
promote spoon-related affordances that were relevant to the meal-
time situation. Such attentive adjustment by caregivers of the action 
opportunities for novice spoon feeders is consistent with what was 
reported in mother–toddler interaction in a home setting (Nonaka 
& Goldfield, 2018). That study reported caregivers used a variety 
of assistive actions on objects during meals, such as adjusting the 
toddler's food in such a way to promote its “scoopableness,” or 
steadying the dish so that the dish would not be destabilized by the 
child's inexpert spoon use (Nonaka & Goldfield, 2018). Our results 
reveal that caregiver's actions on objects on the table served a dual 
role—(a) to make available to toddlers food-related affordances of 
the spoon, and (b) to guide toddlers’ attention toward those food-
related affordances. The second role was facilitated by the fact (as 
revealed in our results) that toddlers frequently chose to look at the 
caregiver's hand. This latter role is consistent with recent studies 
which have documented a role of manual action in the management 
of joint attention (Rader & Zukow-Goldring, 2010; Yu & Smith, 2013, 
2017). Similarly, Yu and Smith (2017) reported an experimental study 
in which individual differences in how toddlers attended to objects 
that they held in their own hands predicted how much time toddlers 
and their parents spent in joint attention. Our findings add to this 
literature by revealing that caregivers’ manual actions on objects 
guided toddlers’ attention in the specific context of mealtime set-
ting. There appeared to be a reciprocal caregiver–toddler coupling in 
which the caregiver's manual actions provided guidance about what 
toddlers should attend to, and in which toddlers respond with their 
own choices for selective attention, and for actualization of affor-
dances that had been promoted by the caregiver.
4.2 | Differential looking at the caregiver's face and hands
Toddlers were significantly more likely to look at the caregiver's hand 
(19.38% of observed duration) than at the caregiver's face (3.20% of 
observed duration). This result is consistent with the previous studies 
on infant's gaze in different contexts (Deàk, Krasno, Triesch, Lewis, 
& Sepeta, 2014; Franchak, 2019; Rader & Zukow-Goldring, 2010; 
Yoshida & Smith, 2008; Yu & Smith, 2017). For example, in real-life 
locomotor play, 12-month-olds spend only 4% of the time looking at 
caregivers’ faces and 15% of time looking at caregivers’ hands and 
bodies (Franchak, 2019). These findings are similar to the figures ob-
tained from the present observation despite difference between the 
studies in task and posture. Franchak (2019) also reported that when 
sitting across from caregivers and playing with toys, 12-month-olds 
tried to keep both toys and caregivers’ faces in view simultaneously, 
whereas by 24 months, children tended to center toys in view at the 
expense of caregivers’ faces. Franchak's findings are important, but 
what remains to be known is exactly when children look at caregiv-
ers’ faces or hands during ongoing dynamic interactions with the 
caregiver. The present result goes beyond those earlier studies by 
indicating that not only the frequency but also the timing of “face 
looking” and “hand looking” differed. We first identified times when 
the toddlers looked at the caregiver's face or hand, and we deter-
mined what the caregiver was doing when toddlers chose to look 
at them. We found that when the caregiver manipulated objects 
FI G U R E 5 How toddlers directed their gaze at caregivers (at their hands vs. at their face) within 2 s after toddlers’ spoon-using actions. Error bars indicate the bootstrapped 95% confidence intervals
    |  9
NONAKA ANd STOFFREGEN
on the table, toddlers were more likely to choose to look at those 
manual actions. Separately, we found that toddlers often looked at 
the caregiver's hand before using their own hands to use their spoon 
in meal-appropriate ways.
The temporal sequencing of events was different in the period 
immediately following toddlers’ own spoon use. After using their 
own spoon to ingest food (a meal-related affordance), toddlers were 
more likely to look at the face (but not the hand) of the caregiver. 
However, the same was true immediately after toddlers had used 
the spoon to actualize affordances that were not meal related (i.e., 
playing with the spoon). It was as if toddlers were monitoring the re-
sponse of the caregivers to their own spoon-using actions; testing to 
see whether the caregiver would indicate approval (e.g., for meal-re-
lated spoon use), or non-approval (e.g., for playful spoon use).
Taken together, our findings suggest that toddler's choices about 
how and when to look at the caregiver were systematic. Our inter-
pretation is that toddlers chose to watch how the caregiver used the 
spoon as an indicator of possibilities for their own spoon use, and 
that, having selected and tried to actualize specific spoon-related 
affordances, toddlers sought feedback from the caregiver about 
the appropriateness of both their performance and their choice of 
spoon-related affordances (Neisser, 1988, p. 43).
In previous research, caregivers have been shown to respond 
differentially to different child activities, and the types of caregiver 
responsiveness followed different developmental trajectories, sug-
gesting that young children played an active role in eliciting care-
givers’ behaviors that may be increasingly meaningful and relevant 
to them as their needs change and as they develop more sophisti-
cated competencies (Bell, 1979; Bornstein, Tamis-LeMonda, Hahn, & 
Haynes, 2008; Lewis & Rosenblum, 1974; Karasik, Tamis-LeMonda, 
& Adolph, 2014). Because of such high level of specificity in the 
moment-to-moment exchanges between children and caregivers, it 
seems quite natural that young spoon feeders have motivations to 
explore the response caregivers display to different forms of spoon 
use. The current study is novel in revealing that toddlers selectively 
looked at the face and hands of the caregiver to obtain particular 
types of information about their own behavior; about behaviors that 
they might do (when watching the caregiver use the spoon), and 
about behaviors that they had done (after the toddler's own spoon 
use). Naturally, we must be cautious in drawing conclusions from any 
observational study. In addition, we cannot generalize from the meal-
time use of utensils to broader developmental processes, or even 
to learning about other tools. It is important to point out, however, 
that many phenomena of skill acquisition have non-obvious causal 
relations to their typical surroundings (Gottlieb, 1998; Turvey & 
Sheya, 2017), including typical cultural surroundings (Gibson, 1950; 
Mauss, 1973; Veissiere et al., 2019), which are so commonplace that 
they can only be discovered through the careful observation of a 
natural environment where such development literally takes place. 
The current study has described the normally occurring reciprocal 
coupling between the actions of caregiver and novice spoon feeders 
that surround the emerging skill that, we hope, may serve as hypoth-
eses to test in a more rigorous experimental setting in the future.
5 | CONCLUSION
The results of our observational study document the nature of social 
interaction in the emergence of skills to perform daily routines in 
a preferred manner in a populated environment, which supplement 
findings from experimental research.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was supported by grants from JSPS KAKENHI Grant 
Numbers JP18K12013 and JP18KT0079 from the Japan Society 
for the Promotion of Science, awarded to Tetsushi Nonaka. We 
are grateful to Kazuko Yoshimoto and the staff at the Yamaboushi 
Nursery Center for giving us the invaluable opportunity for the ob-
servation of lunchtime. We thank Lila Nagai for her help with coding 
and Minami Matsumura for the drawings of Figure 1. An earlier ver-
sion of this article was improved by the suggestions of two anony-
mous reviewers.
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
The data that support the findings of this study are available on re-
quest from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly avail-
able due to privacy restrictions.
Tetsushi Nonaka  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2011-8818 
REFERENCES
Adolph, K. E. (2019). An ecological approach to learning in (not and) development. Human Development, 63(3–4), 180–201. https://doi.org/10.1159/00050 3823Babik, I., Movva, N., Baraldi Cunha, A., & Lobo, M. A. (2019). Development of self-feeding behavior in children with typical devel-opment and those with arm movement impairments. Developmental Psychobiology, 61(8), 1191–1203. https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.21798Bakeman, R., & Quera, V. (2011). Sequential analysis and observational methods for the behavioral sciences. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Bell, R. Q. (1979). Parent, child and reciprocal influences. American Psychologist, 34, 821–826. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.34. 10.821Bornstein, M. H., Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Hahn, C. S., & Haynes, O. M. (2008). Maternal responsiveness to young children at three ages: Longitudinal analysis of a multidimensional, modular, and specific parenting construct. Developmental Psychology, 44(3), 867–874. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.44.3.867Boyer, I., & Bril, B. (2001). Structuring a child activity: A comparative study of mother-child interaction in a complex bimanual task. In J. van der Kamp, A. Ledebt, G. Savelsbergh, & E. Thelen (Eds.), Proceedings of the International Conference on Motor Development and Learning in Infancy (pp. 55–58). Amsterdam, the Netherlands: IFKB.Chen, C. H., Castellanos, I., Yu, C., & Houston, D. M. (2019). Parental linguistic input and its relation to toddlers’ visual attention in joint object play: a comparison between children with normal hearing and children with hearing loss. Infancy, 24(4), 586–611. https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.12291Connolly, K., & Dalgleish, M. (1989). The emergence of a tool-using skill in infancy. Developmental Psychology, 25, 894–912. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.25.6.894
10  |    
NONAKA ANd STOFFREGEN
Corbetta, D., Williams, J. L., & Haynes, J. M. (2016). Bare fingers, but no obvious influence of “prickly” Velcro! In the absence of parents' en-couragement, it is not clear that “sticky mittens” provide an advantage to the process of learning to reach. Infant Behavior and Development, 42, 168–178. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2015.05.001Deàk, G. O., Krasno, A. M., Triesch, J., Lewis, J., & Sepeta, L. (2014). Watch the hands: Infants can learn to follow gaze by seeing adults manipulate objects. Developmental Science, 17, 270–281. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12122Efron, B., & Tibshirani, R. (1986). Bootstrap methods for standard errors, confidence intervals, and other measures of statistical accuracy. Statistical Science, 1(1), 54–75. https://doi.org/10.1214/ss/11770 13815Franchak, J. M. (2019). Looking with the eyes and head. In J. Wagman & J. Blau (Eds.), Perception as information detection: Reflections on Gibson's ecological approach to visual perception (pp. 205–221). New York: Routledge.Gesell, A., & Ilg, F. L. (1937). Feeding behavior of infants. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott.Gibson, J. J. (1950). The implications of learning theory for social psy-chology. In J. G. Miller (Ed.), Experiments in social process: A symposium on social psychology (pp. 149–167). New York: McGraw-Hill.Goldstein, M. H., & Schwade, J. A. (2008). Social feedback to infants' babbling facilitates rapid phonological learning. Psychological Science, 19(5), 515–523. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02117.xGottlieb, G. (1998). Normally occurring environmental and behavioral influences on gene activity: From central dogma to probabilis-tic epigenesis. Psychological Review, 105(4), 792–802. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.105.4.792-802Heras-Escribano, M., & de Pinedo, M. (2016). Are affordances norma-tive? Phenomenology and Cognitive Sciences, 15, 565–589. https://doi.org/10.1007/s1109 7-015-9440-0Karasik, L. B., Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., & Adolph, K. E. (2014). Crawling and walking infants elicit different verbal responses from mothers. Developmental Science, 17(3), 388–395. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12129Lewis, M., & Rosenblum, L. (Eds.). (1974). The origins of behavior: Vol. 1. The effect of the infant on its caregiver. New York: Wiley.Mauss, M. (1973). Techniques of the body. Economy and Society, 2, 70–88. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085 14730 0000003 (Original work published 1935 in Journal de Psychologie Normal et Pathologique, 32, 271–293).Neisser, U. (1988). Five kinds of self-knowledge. Philosophical Psychology, 1(1), 35–59. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515 08880 8572924Nonaka, T., & Goldfield, E. C. (2018). Mother-infant interaction in the emergence of a tool-using skill at mealtime: A process of affor-dance selection. Ecological Psychology, 30(3), 278–298. https://doi.org/10.1080/10407 413.2018.1438199Pinheiro, J. C., & Bates, D. M. (2019). nlme: Linear and nonlinear mixed effects models, version 3.1-141. Retrieved from https://cran.r-proje ct.org/packa ge=nlmeRader, N. V., & Zukow-Goldring, P. (2010). How the hands control at-tention during early word learning. Gesture, 2, 202–221. https://doi.org/10.1075/gest.10.2-3.05radReed, E. S. (1993). The intention to use a specific affordance: A concep-tual framework for psychology. In R. H. Wozniak & K. W. Fischer 
(Eds.), Development in context: Acting and thinking in specific environ-ments (pp. 45–76). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Reed, E. S. (1996). Encountering the world: Toward an ecological psychology. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Rietveld, E. (2008). Situated normativity: The normative aspect of em-bodied cognition in unreflective action. Mind, 117(468), 973–1001. https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzn050Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Kuchirko, Y., & Tafuro, L. (2013). From action to in-teraction: Infant object exploration and mothers' contingent respon-siveness. IEEE Transactions on Autonomous Mental Development, 5(3), 202–209. https://doi.org/10.1109/TAMD.2013.2269905Turvey, M. T., & Sheya, A. (2017). Non-obvious influences on percep-tion-action abilities. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 24(5), 1597–1603. https://doi.org/10.3758/s1342 3-016-1223-2Valsiner, J. (1984). Construction of the zone of proximal development in adult-child joint action: The socialization of meals. In B. Rogoff & J. V. Wertsch (Eds.), Children's learning in the “zones of proximal develop-ment” (pp. 65–76). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.Valsiner, J. (1997). Culture and the development of children's action: A the-ory of human development. New York, NY: Wiley.Veissiere, S. P. L., Constant, A., Ramstead, M. J. D., Friston, K. J., & Kirmayer, L. J. (2019). Thinking through other minds: A variational approach to cognition and culture. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140 525X1 9001213Wagman, J. B., Caputo, S. E., & Stoffregen, T. A. (2016). Hierarchical nesting of affordances in a tool use task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 42(10), 1627–1642. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp00 00251Ye, L., Cardwell, W., & Mark, L. S. (2009). Perceiving multiple affor-dances for objects. Ecological Psychology, 21, 185–217. https://doi.org/10.1080/10407 41090 3058229Yoshida, H., & Smith, L. B. (2008). What’s in view for toddlers? Using a head camera to study visual experience. Infancy, 13, 229–248. https://doi.org/10.1080/15250 00080 2004437Yu, C., & Smith, L. B. (2013). Joint attention without gaze following: Human infants and their parents coordinate visual attention to ob-jects through eye-hand coordination. PLoS ONE, 8, e79659. https://doi.org/10.1371/journ al.pone.0079659Yu, C., & Smith, L. B. (2017). Hand-eye coordination predicts joint atten-tion. Child Development, 88(6), 2060–2078. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12730Zukow-Goldring, P. (1997). A social ecological realist approach to the emergence of the lexicon: Educating attention to a modal invariants in gesture and speech. In C. Dent-Read, & P. Zukow-Goldring (Eds.), Evolving explanations of development: Ecological approaches to organ-ism-environment systems (pp. 199–250). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/10265 -006
How to cite this article: Nonaka T, Stoffregen TA. Social 
interaction in the emergence of toddler’s mealtime spoon 
use. Developmental Psychobiology. 2020;00:1–10. https://doi.
org/10.1002/dev.21978