Individual Differences and the Development of Joint Attention in Infancy

Abstract

This study examined the development of joint attention in 95 infants assessed between 9 and 18 months of age. Infants displayed significant test -retest reliability on measures of following gaze and gestures (responding to joint attention, RJA) and in their use of eye contact to establish social attention coordination (initiating joint attention, IJA). Infants displayed a linear, increasing pattern of age-related growth on most joint attention measures. However, IJA was characterized by a significant cubic developmental pattern. Infants with different rates of cognitive development exhibited different frequencies of joint attention acts at each age, but did not exhibit different agerelated patterns of development. Finally, 12-month RJA and 18-month IJA predicted 24-month language after controlling for general aspects of cognitive development.The human capacity for social attention coordination has been referred to as joint attention (Bakeman & Adamson, 1984;Bruner & Sherwood, 1983). Different behavioral manifestations of joint attention begin to emerge in the first 6 months of life (D'Entremont, Hains, & Muir, 1997;Farroni, Massaccesi, & Francesca, 2002;Morales, Mundy, & Rojas, 1998) and continue to develop at least through 3 years of age (Adamson, Bakeman, & Dekner, 2004;Carpenter, Nagell, & Tomasello, 1998). These different infant joint attention behaviors may be used for declarative and instrumental-imperative functions (Bates, Benigni, Bretherton, Camaioni, & Volterra, 1979), as well as to initiate or respond to bids in interactions with social partners (Seibert, Hogan, & Mundy, 1982).Various labels have been used to refer to these behavioral dimensions of infant joint attention (Carpenter et al., 1998). Here we adopt the nomenclature initially suggested by Seibert et al. (1982) that is currently widely used in the research literature as well as in multidimensional assessments of early social communication development (e.g., Fidler, Philofsky, Hepburn, & Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Peter Mundy, University of Miami, 5665 Ponce De Leon Blvd., Coral Gables, FL 33146. Electronic mail may be sent to pmundy@miami.edu. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptChild Dev. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 March 11. Published in final edited form as:Child Dev. 2007 ; 78(3): 938-954. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2007.01042.x. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript Rogers, 2005;Henderson, Yoder, Yale, & McDuffie, 2002;Laing et al., 2002; Lord et al., 2002;Mundy, Sigman, Kasari, & Yirmiya, 1988;Smith & Ulvund, 2003;Wetherby, Allen, Cleary, Kublin, & Goldstein, 2002). Accordingly, responding to joint attention (RJA) refers to the ability to follow the direction of gaze and gestures of others, initiating joint attention (IJA) refers to the ability to use direction of gaze and gestures to direct the attention of others to spontaneously share experiences, initiating behavior regulation/requests (IBR) refers to the ability to use gaze and gestures to...

Joint attention and language evolution

“…This conclusion is in line with the developmental data from Reboul (2003) and other data suggesting a clear link between joint attention and language development (e.g., Mundy et al, 2007). Whereas infants knew only a few to a couple of dozen words at the moment they were developing their joint attentional skills (from 9 to 18 months of age), this number rapidly increased to over 300 in the following half year, when they were able to use these skills.…”

“…Carpenter et al (1998) found that the order in which the three stages arise is: checking attention (month 9-10), followed by following attention (month 10.5) and only then directing attention (month 12.6). This ordering that has been confirmed in other studies for autistic children (Carpenter, Pennington & Rogers, 2002) and healthy children (Mundy et al, 2007). Moreover, the frequency with which children use these three attentional mechanisms between 9 and 18 months of age predicts how well these children perform at language development tests at 24 months (Mundy et al, 2007).…”

“…This ordering that has been confirmed in other studies for autistic children (Carpenter, Pennington & Rogers, 2002) and healthy children (Mundy et al, 2007). Moreover, the frequency with which children use these three attentional mechanisms between 9 and 18 months of age predicts how well these children perform at language development tests at 24 months (Mundy et al, 2007).…”

“…Autistic children, who reveal a different development of joint attentional skills than non-autistic children show correlated differences in language development (Dawson et al, 2004). Even regarding the various stages in joint attention, there appears to be a measurable correlation between the use of these stages of joint attention between 9 and 18 months old infants and the level of language competence at 24 months of age (Mundy et al, 2007). An interesting issue is how joint attention influences language development in children, i.e.…”

Social-communicative abilities and language in preschoolers with autism spectrum disorders: Associations differ depending on language age

“…Joint attention is said to be important in language learning, because children need social cues like the eye gaze of a social partner to map new words to objects (Baldwin, 2000). Research has found concurrent and longitudinal associations between joint attention and language in typical children (Mundy et al, 2007) and children with ASD (Charman, 2003;Schietecatte, Roeyers, & Warreyn, 2012). Pretend play and language are theoretically associated because they both rely on a symbolic representation ability (Lewis, 2003).…”