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Joint Attention (joint + attention)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Medical Sciences	57%
Psychology	31%

Selected Abstracts

Child, Caregiver, and Temperament Contributions to Infant Joint Attention

INFANCY, Issue 4 2003
Amy Vaughan
Little is known about variables that may contribute to individual differences in infant joint attention, or the coordination of visual attention with a social partner. Therefore, this study examined the contributions of caregiver behavior and temperament to infant joint attention development between 9 and 12 months. Data were collected from 57 infants using a caregiver,infant paradigm, an infant,tester paradigm, and a parent report of infant temperament. Nine-month measures of caregiver scaffolding and infant initiating joint attention (IJA) with testers were significantly related to 12-month infant IJA with testers. A temperament measure of positive emotional reactivity was related to 9-month IJA, and a measure of negative emotional reactivity was related to 12-month IJA. Temperament and caregiver scaffolding measures, however, were not associated with the development of infant responding to joint attention. These results further the understanding of the multiple processes that contribute to joint attention development in infancy, and support the hypothesis that initiating and responding measures tap different aspects of joint attention development. [source]

Maternal Depression and the Ability to Facilitate Joint Attention With 18-Month-Olds

INFANCY, Issue 1 2003
Erin N. Henderson
Maternal depression has been associated with the mother-child dyad's ability to engage in joint attention. This study of 69 depressed and 63 control mothers and their 18-month-olds addresses how aspects of maternal psychopathology are related to joint attention during a snack interaction. Although nondepressed-mother dyads appeared better at joint attention than depressed-mother dyads, this difference was not statistically significant. Among the depressed-mother dyads, joint attention was related to presence of a comorbid Axis I diagnosis (usually an anxiety disorder) versus a diagnosis of major depressive disorder (MDD) only. Surprisingly, dyads with mothers who met criteria for a comorbid diagnosis were better at joint attention than those with MDD only, despite the fact that those mothers were likely to have longer and more severe depressive histories. The relationship between comorbid status and joint attention was mediated by the mother's affect. Rationale for the paradoxical finding that the "more pathological" mothers had greater success in engaging in joint attention is discussed. [source]

A parallel and distributed-processing model of joint attention, social cognition and autism

AUTISM RESEARCH, Issue 1 2009
Peter Mundy
Abstract The impaired development of joint attention is a cardinal feature of autism. Therefore, understanding the nature of joint attention is central to research on this disorder. Joint attention may be best defined in terms of an information-processing system that begins to develop by 4,6 months of age. This system integrates the parallel processing of internal information about one's own visual attention with external information about the visual attention of other people. This type of joint encoding of information about self and other attention requires the activation of a distributed anterior and posterior cortical attention network. Genetic regulation, in conjunction with self-organizing behavioral activity, guides the development of functional connectivity in this network. With practice in infancy the joint processing of self,other attention becomes automatically engaged as an executive function. It can be argued that this executive joint attention is fundamental to human learning as well as the development of symbolic thought, social cognition and social competence throughout the life span. One advantage of this parallel and distributed-processing model of joint attention is that it directly connects theory on social pathology to a range of phenomena in autism associated with neural connectivity, constructivist and connectionist models of cognitive development, early intervention, activity-dependent gene expression and atypical ocular motor control. [source]

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DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE, Issue 1 2008
Infants' neural processing of an adult's object-directed eye gaze
Previous research suggests that by 4 months of age infants use the eye gaze of adults to guide their attention and facilitate processing of environmental information. Here we address the question of how infants process the relation between another person and an external object. We applied an ERP paradigm to investigate the neural processes underlying the perception of the direction of an adult's eye gaze in 4-month-old infants. Infants showed differential processing of an adult's eye gaze, which was directed at a simultaneously presented object compared to non-object-directed eye gaze. This distinction was evident in two ERP components: The Negative component, reflecting attentional processes, and the positive slow wave, which is involved in memory encoding. The implications of these findings for the development of joint attention and related social cognitive functions are discussed. [source]

Type of Maternal Object Motion During Synchronous Naming Predicts Preverbal Infants' Learning of Word,Object Relations

INFANCY, Issue 2 2008
Dalit J. Matatyaho
Mothers' use of specific types of object motion in synchrony with object naming was examined, along with infants' joint attention to the mother and object, as a predictor of word learning. During a semistructured 3-min play episode, mothers (N = 24) taught the names of 2 toy objects to their preverbal 6- to 8-month-old infants. The episodes were recoded from Gogate, Bolzani, and Betancourt (2006) to provide a more fine-grained description of object motions used by mothers during naming. The results indicated that mothers used forward/downward and shaking motions more frequently and upward and backward motions less frequently in temporal synchrony with the spoken words. These motions likely highlight novel word,object relations. Furthermore, maternal use of shaking motions in synchrony with the spoken words and infants' ability to switch gaze from mother to object contributed to infants' learning of the word,object relations, as observed on a posttest. Thus, preverbal infants' learn word,object relations within an embodied system involving tightly coupled interaction between infants' perception and joint attention, and specific properties of caregivers' naming. [source]

Child, Caregiver, and Temperament Contributions to Infant Joint Attention

Maternal Depression and the Ability to Facilitate Joint Attention With 18-Month-Olds

Children Build on Pragmatic Information in Language Acquisition

LINGUISTICS & LANGUAGE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 7 2010
Eve V. Clark
Pragmatic information is integral to language use for both adults and children. Children rely on contextually shared knowledge to communicate before they can talk: they make use of gesture to convey their first meanings and then add words to gestures. Like adults, they build on joint attention, physical copresence, and conversational copresence both as they acquire and as they use language. This can be seen in children's early communication, in their first inferences about word and utterance meanings, and in their ability to make use of appropriate contextual information as they learn how to interpret and produce terms like big or long compared to full, almost and only, and all and some. [source]

Flexibility in the use of requesting gestures in squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus)

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PRIMATOLOGY, Issue 8 2010
James R. Anderson
Abstract Three squirrel monkeys, trained to make a requesting gesture, were tested in the presence of a human assistant whose visual attention varied across trials. When food was available in one dish and an empty dish was nearby, the monkeys pointed overwhelmingly toward the former, regardless of where the assistant was looking. Looking at the assistant while pointing ("monitoring") peaked when she looked at them and when she attempted to engage them in joint attention. When only one dish was present, the monkeys refrained from gesturing if it was empty and if no assistant was present. They gestured more when the assistant made eye contact with them. Furthermore, when the assistant's focus of attention switched from the dish or the ceiling to the monkeys, the latter resumed pointing and increased their monitoring of the assistant. This is the first demonstration of such flexible use of an intentionally communicative requesting gesture in New World monkeys. Am. J. Primatol. 72:707,714, 2010. © 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]

Joint attention training for children with autism using behavior modification procedures

THE JOURNAL OF CHILD PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHIATRY AND ALLIED DISCIPLINES, Issue 3 2003
Christina Whalen
Background: Deficits in joint attention are considered by many researchers to be an early predictor of childhood autism (e.g., Osterling & Dawson, 1994) and are considered to be pivotal to deficits in language, play, and social development in this population (Mundy, 1995). Although many researchers have noted the importance of joint attention deficits in the development of children with autism (e.g., Mundy, Sigman, & Kasari, 1994) and have called for intervention strategies (e.g., Mundy & Crowson, 1997), few studies have attempted to target joint attention. In this study, joint attention behaviors were taught to children with autism using a behavior modification procedure. Methods: A multiple-baseline design was implemented to evaluate intervention effects. The following target behaviors were included in the intervention: 1) Responding to showing, pointing, and gaze shifting of adult; 2) Coordinated gaze shifting (i.e., coordinated joint attention); and 3) Pointing (with the purpose of sharing, not requesting). Generalization to setting and parent, follow-up sessions, and social validation measures were also analyzed. Results: Joint attention behaviors were effectively trained and targeted behaviors generalized to other settings. In addition, positive changes were noted by naïve observers using social validation measures. Conclusions: Integrating joint attention training into existing interventions may be important for children with autism. In addition, training parents in these techniques may help to maintain joint attention skills outside of the treatment setting. [source]

A parallel and distributed-processing model of joint attention, social cognition and autism

Self in Context: Autonomy and Relatedness in Japanese and U.S. Mother,Preschooler Dyads

CHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 6 2002
Tracy A. Dennis
Cultural differences and similarities in socialization during two contrasting laboratory tasks were examined in 30 Japanese mothers and their preschoolers, both temporarily residing in the United States, and 30 U.S. mothers and their preschoolers (age: M= 55.8 months, SD= 4.9). Mother and child actions, speech, emotion, and attention were coded from videotaped observations during a free play task and waiting task. Cross,cultural comparisons showed that U.S. mothers had more conversations that emphasized individual experiences, more often acted as playmates and used joint attention, maintained more physical distance, showed more positive emotions, and made more positive responses to child accomplishment. In contrast, Japanese mothers had more conversations that emphasized shared experiences, showed more divided attention, and maintained social role distinctions. Similar, but fewer cultural differences emerged for children. However, maternal and child characteristics also varied by task context. The results suggested an emphasis on autonomy in U.S. dyads and an emphasis on relatedness in Japanese dyads, but the interactions with task context revealed the coexistence of autonomy and relatedness. [source]

Neurocognitive Function and Joint Attention Ability in Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder Versus Developmental Delay

CHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 2 2002
Geraldine Dawson
Studies have shown that young children with autism are not impaired on prefrontal tasks relative to what would be expected for their mental age, raising questions about the executive dysfunction hypothesis of autism. These studies did not include ventromedial prefrontal tasks, however. The present study examined whether young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are impaired on ventromedial prefrontal tasks, and whether performance on such tasks is correlated with a core autism symptom, joint attention ability. Seventy-two 3- to 4-year-old children with ASD, 34 3- to 4-year-old developmentally delayed children, and 39 12- to 46-month-old typically developing children, matched on mental age, were administered ventromedial and dorsolateral prefrontal tasks and joint attention tasks. Children with ASD performed similarly to comparison groups on all executive function tasks, indicating that at this early age, there is no autism-specific pattern of executive dysfunction. Ventromedial, but not dorsolateral, prefrontal task performance was strongly correlated with joint attention ability, however. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex is hypothesized to play a role in the development of joint attention and possibly some aspects of the autistic syndrome. [source]

Cooperation and Communication in the 2nd Year of Life

CHILD DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVES, Issue 1 2007
Michael Tomasello
ABSTRACT,Although primates have evolved complex cognitive skills and strategies for competing with others in their social group, only humans have developed complex cognitive skills and motivations for collaborating with one another in joint endeavors. This cooperative dimension of human cognition emerges most clearly around the first birthday as children begin to collaborate and communicate with joint intentions and joint attention. This collaboration is also grounded in social motivations for helping and sharing with others that are unique to humans. In using the skills of shared intentionality that underlie these cooperative interactions, 1-year-olds come to create perspectival cognitive representations. [source]