Testing joint attention, imitation, and play as infancy precursors to language and theory of mind

Charman, Tony; Baron‐Cohen, Simon; Swettenham, J; Baird, Gillian; Cox, Anthony; Drew, Auriol

doi:10.1016/s0885-2014(01)00037-5

Cited by 503 publications

(355 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…Children are already able to understand others' intention in the beginning of their second year of life, even if this does not mean they have a fully fledged adult level of intention-understanding. In any event, the early understanding of intention as well as joint attention are related to the later development of a theory of mind (Charman et al, 2000;Olineck & Poulin-Dubois, 2005;Wellman, Phillips, Dunphy-Lelii, & LaLonde, 2004). In particular, Colonnesi, Rieffe, Koops, and Perucchini (2007), in a study related to the present study, found that the ability to follow the pointing gesture at 12 months of age predicts the later ability to explain others' behaviour in a psychological way and the perception understanding at the age of three years.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 51%

Young children's psychological explanations and their relationship to perception‐ and intention‐understanding

Colonnesi¹,

Koops

Terwogt

2007

Infant and Child Development

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The present study examined two key aspects of young children's ability to explain human behaviour in a mentalistic way. First, we explored desires that are of a level of difficulty comparable with that of false beliefs. For this purpose, the so-called 'alternative desires' were created. Second, we examined how children's psychological explanations are related to their understanding of perception and intention. A perception-understanding task, an intention-understanding task and a psychological-explanation task were administered to 80 three-year-olds. Results offer support for the thesis that the level of difficulty of belief and desire explanations is comparable. Moreover, children's psychological explanations are related to their understanding of perception and intention. The results lend support to the idea that mentalistic explanations are an explicit manifestation of children's level of theory of mind.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 51%

Young children's psychological explanations and their relationship to perception‐ and intention‐understanding

Colonnesi¹,

Koops

Terwogt

2007

Infant and Child Development

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“…Then, as children develop, these systems might become more lateralized and exhibit less overlap. This seems plausible, as an elegant body of behavioral work on language development indicates that language abilities and social perception abilities might require the same underlying skills, including joint attention and intentionality assessment (e.g., Charman, Baron-Cohen, Swettenham, Baird, Cox, & Drew, 2001;Flavell, 1999;Tomasello & Farrar, 1986).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

School-aged children exhibit domain-specific responses to biological motion

Carter

Pelphrey

2006

Social Neuroscience

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Prior studies have implicated the superior temporal sulcus region for processing various types of biological motion in children and adults. However, no previous research in children compared this activity to that involved in coherent, meaningful, non-biological motion perception to show specificity for biological motion processing. In this study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore which brain regions were specific for biological motion in 7-to 10-year-old children. We compared brain activity in response to biological motion by a biological figure (a walking human); biological motion by a non-biological figure (a walking robot); disorganized, nonbiological motion by a disjointed mechanical figure; and organized, non-biological motion by a grandfather clock. We identified a network of brain regions that had a greater response evoked by biological than by non-biological motion, including the superior temporal sulcus and mirror neuron regions. Additionally, we found a developmental change suggesting increasing specificity for biological motion with age in the superior temporal sulcus region. We discuss these results in the context of research and theory that has emphasized the important role of biological motion perception in the development of theory-of-mind abilities.

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“…JA is of considerable interest both for cognitive and clinical neuroscience because it arises early in development, preceding and shaping the emergence of symbolic communication and higher-order social functions such as representational theory of mind (13,14). Disturbances of JA in developmental disorders with prominent social disturbances such as autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, but also schizophrenia, have been identified (see, e.g., refs.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Information flow between interacting human brains: Identification, validation, and relationship to social expertise

Bilek¹,

Ruf

Schäfer³

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

137

131

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Social interactions are fundamental for human behavior, but the quantification of their neural underpinnings remains challenging. Here, we used hyperscanning functional MRI (fMRI) to study information flow between brains of human dyads during real-time social interaction in a joint attention paradigm. In a hardware setup enabling immersive audiovisual interaction of subjects in linked fMRI scanners, we characterize cross-brain connectivity components that are unique to interacting individuals, identifying information flow between the sender's and receiver's temporoparietal junction. We replicate these findings in an independent sample and validate our methods by demonstrating that cross-brain connectivity relates to a key real-world measure of social behavior. Together, our findings support a central role of human-specific cortical areas in the brain dynamics of dyadic interactions and provide an approach for the noninvasive examination of the neural basis of healthy and disturbed human social behavior with minimal a priori assumptions.fMRI | hyperscanning | joint attention H uman social interactions have likely shaped brain evolution and are critical for development, health, and society. Defining their neural underpinnings is a key goal of social neuroscience. Interacting dyads, the simplest and fundamental form of human interaction, have been examined with behavioral setups that used real movement interactions during communication in real time as a proxy (1-4), providing mathematical models representing human interaction, goal sharing, mutual engagement, and coordination. To identify the neural systems supporting these behaviors, neuroimaging would be the tool of choice, but studying dyadic interactions with this method is both experimentally and analytically challenging. Consequently, the neural processes underlying human social interactions remain incompletely understood.Experimentally, studying dyads with neuroimaging technology that allows only one participant per scanner provides challenges that have been addressed in the literature in one of two ways. First, the audiovisual experiences of human social contact have been simulated using stimuli such as photographs, recorded videos, or computerized avatars in the absence of human interaction (5-7), or, recently, immersive audiovisual linkups have been used with one of the two participants being scanned (8, 9). Secondly, pioneering neuroimaging experiments have coupled two scanner sites over the Internet, a setup called hyperscanning, enabling subjects to observe higher-level behavioral responses such as choices made to accept or reject an offer in real time while in the scanners (10, 11). In the current study, we aimed to combine the advantages of these experimental approaches by enabling two humans to see (and possibly hear) each other in a hyperscanning framework, enabling an immersive social interaction while both participant's brains are imaged. To do so, we implemented a setup with delay-free data transmission and precisely synchronized data acquisitio...

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Testing joint attention, imitation, and play as infancy precursors to language and theory of mind

Cited by 503 publications

References 52 publications

Young children's psychological explanations and their relationship to perception‐ and intention‐understanding

Young children's psychological explanations and their relationship to perception‐ and intention‐understanding

School-aged children exhibit domain-specific responses to biological motion

Information flow between interacting human brains: Identification, validation, and relationship to social expertise

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