How joint attention relates to cooperation in 1- and 2-year-olds

Abstract

Joint attention has been suggested to contribute to children’s development of cooperation; however, few empirical studies have directly tested this hypothesis. Children aged 1 and 2 years participated in two joint action activities to assess their cooperation with an adult partner, who stopped participating at a specific moment during the tasks. Children’s joint attention skills were measured by the Early Social Communication Scales (ESCS). Results showed that children’s responding to joint attention ability contributed to their successful cooperation in an activity that required parallel roles, whereas initiating joint attention ability contributed to their successful cooperation in an activity that required complementary roles. These results suggest a complex relationship between joint attention and cooperative abilities when considering RJA and IJA separately.

Joint-Attention and the Social Phenotype of School-Aged Children with ASD

“…A third domain follows from the evidence that joint attention plays a vital role in establishing a common perceptual and cognitive frame necessary to the development of joint action, as practiced in cooperative and collaborative behavior in typical children and children with ASD (e.g. Mundy 2016;Wu et al 2013). It is plausible that parents can provide valid reports of individual differences in cooperative and collaborative behavior tendencies that would, in part, contribute to a measure of the latent construct of joint attention in childhood.…”

“…A third cluster of items on the C-JARS was developed based on the previously noted evidence of the association between joint attention and the development and maintenance of cooperative and collaborative behavior in typical children and children with ASD (e.g. Wu et al 2013). This item domain is referred to as Joint Action on the C-JARS and an exemplary item of this domain also appears in Table 2.…”

“…gaze coordination) to disambiguate linguistic references, infer intentions, and enrich mutual understanding in social communication interactions (Lee et al 1998;Shockley et al 2009;Shulze et al 2013;Tribushinina 2014). Other research indicates that joint attention plays a role in establishing a common perceptual and cognitive frame necessary to the development of cooperative and collaborative behavior in childhood (Wu et al 2013), as well as children with ASD (Dykstra Steinbrenner and Watson 2015). Cognitive as well as social psychological research also suggest that the experience of joint attention enhances information processing within individuals and is integral to a sense of intersubjectivity and shared experience in adults and children (e.g., Bayliss et al 2013;Boothby et al 2014;Böckler et al 2012; Kim and Mundy 2012).…”

Maternal Values and Personality Enhance Infant Cooperation with an Adult

“…Further, Endedijk et al (2015) demonstrated that two-to three-year-olds' increased surgency positively correlated with affiliative behaviour (i.e., positive directing or helping) during a cooperative task, which was, in turn, associated with cooperative success. Additionally, Vaughan et al (2003) showed that increased negative affectivity predicted infants' decreased ability to coordinate their attention with others, an ability that underlies cooperation (Call, 2009;Wu et al, 2013).…”

Initial Impressions Matter: Warm-up Play Impacts 2-year-olds' Cooperative Ability with an Unfamiliar Same-aged Peer

“…Cooperative activities, where individuals coordinate their actions to attain shared goals, pervade most facets of human societies. Critically, research links children's ability to e ectively coordinate their actions with social partners to their cognitive (Wu et al, 2013) and social (Plötner et al, 2015) functioning. Cooperation is also likely to indirectly influence individual well-being, with individuals who show increased social functioning (i.e., getting along and working well with others) demonstrating increased well-being (Endedijk et al, 2020;Sette et al, 2013).…”