EEG correlates of the development of infant joint attention skills

Abstract

The development of the capacity for social attention coordination, or "joint attention," is a major milestone of infancy. Data from a recent study of handicapped infants have raised the hypothesis that the tendency to initiate bids for joint attention may reflect processes associated with the frontal cortex to a greater extent than other forms of infant attention coordination (R. Caplan et al., 1993). This hypothesis was examined in a longitudinal study of 32 normally developing infants. The results indicated that EEG data at 14 months indicative of left frontal, as well as left and right central cortical activity, was associated with the tendency to initiate joint attention bids (IJA) at 14 and 18 months. In contrast, a pattern of left parietal activation and right parietal deactivation at 14 months was associated with the development of the capacity to respond to the joint attention bids (RJA) of others at 14 and 18 months. These results were interpreted to be consistent with a general anterior-posterior model of attention development (M. Posner & S. Petersen, 1990). The implications of these results for current conceptualizations of joint attention development, as well as for understanding the disturbance of joint attention skill development in autism are discussed.

Development of structure and function in the infant brain: Implications for cognition, language and social behaviour

“…It can be either initiated by the infant, calling an adult's attention to an object the infant is looking at, or the infant can follow the attention of an adult. It has been suggested that these two highly related skills are actually subserved by two different brain systems making the investigation of their development a very attractive project for cognitive neuroscience (Mundy et al, 2000;Mundy 2003).…”

“…This suggests that frontal lobe function may play a role in IJA. In addition, a longitudinal study of EEG coherence in infants from 14 to 18 months of age described EEG data suggesting left frontal and left and right central activation was associated with IJA ability at 14 and 18 months (Mundy et al, 2000). This finding was expanded upon by Henderson et al (2002) who used dense array electrodes for their EEG recordings and found medial frontal cortical activation in both hemispheres was associated with better IJA performance.…”

“…In order to respond to a partner's call for joint attention the infant must be able to switch his or her focus of attention. Data from the Mundy et al (2000) EEG study have implicated left parietal area activation and right parietal deactivation in RJA tasks. These areas have also been linked behaviourally to tasks that tap early attention shifting capacities in 4-6-month-old infants (Johnson et al, 1991a,b).…”

12-month-old infants allocate increased neural resources to stimuli associated with negative adult emotion.

“…The development of these abilities requires the maturation of a complex set of brain areas, each of which can be associated with one or more of the three elements involved in social referencing. Frontal areas likely involved in the development of joint attention (Mundy, Card, & Fox, 2000;Mundy, Fox, & Card, 2003) are probably important for infants' developing ability to seek social information. Structures in the medial temporal lobe are important for recognition of emotions (Adolphs, Baron-Cohen, & Tranel, 2002;Cahill, Babinsky, Markowitsch, & McGaugh, 1995;Thomas et al, 2001), but to associate these emotions with novel objects also requires participation of medial temporal lobe areas involved in memory (Nelson, 1995).…”

Embodied Simulation of Others Being Touched in 1-Year-Old Infants

“…In case infants lost interest in the videos, brightly colored short video clips were presented as attention grabbers. This is an established procedure that allows to keep the infant's visual attention and to yield minimal eye and motor movements (e.g., Mundy et al, 2000;Paulus et al, 2014). Infants were videotaped during this procedure to be able to control for attentional distraction and movements.…”