The development of joint visual attention: a longitudinal study of gaze following during interactions with mothers and strangers.

Two- to 8-month-old infants interacted with their mother or a stranger in a prospective longitudinal gaze following study. Gaze following, as assessed by eye tracking, emerged between 2 and 4 months and stabilized between 6 and 8 months of age. Overall, infants followed the gaze of a stranger more than they followed the gaze of their mothers, demonstrating a stranger preference that emerged between 4 and 6 months of age. These findings do not support the notion that infants acquire gaze following through reinforcement learning. Instead, the findings are discussed with respect to the social cognitive framework, suggesting that young infants are driven by social cognitive motives in their interactions with others.

[1]  Michael Morales,et al.  Responding to Joint Attention Across the 6- Through 24-Month Age Period and Early Language Acquisition , 2000 .

[2]  S. Altschul,et al.  Attachment and Loss, Vol. 3. Loss, Sadness and Depression. By John Bowlby. , 1984 .

[3]  Mark H. Johnson,et al.  The development and neural basis of referential gaze perception , 2006, Social neuroscience.

[4]  P. Mundy,et al.  Individual differences in joint attention skill development in the second year , 1998 .

[5]  Michael Tomasello,et al.  All great ape species follow gaze to distant locations and around barriers. , 2005, Journal of comparative psychology.

[6]  Ben Kenward,et al.  The Microstructure of Infants' Gaze as They View Adult Shifts in Overt Attention , 2008 .

[7]  M. Tomasello,et al.  Fourteen-through 18-month-old infants di eren-tially imitate intentional and accidental actions , 1998 .

[8]  A. Kingstone,et al.  The eyes have it! Reflexive orienting is triggered by nonpredictive gaze , 1998 .

[9]  Agnes Volein,et al.  Infants can infer the presence of hidden objects from referential gaze information , 2008 .

[10]  Michael Morales,et al.  Following the direction of gaze and language development in 6-month-olds , 1998 .

[11]  B. D’Entremont.  A perceptual–attentional explanation of gaze following in 3- and 6-month-olds , 2000 .

[12]  Mark H. Johnson,et al.  Gaze Following in Newborns , 2004 .

[13]  Gedeon O. Deák,et al.  Nine-month-olds' shared visual attention as a function of gesture and object location. , 2004 .

[14]  Chris Moore,et al.  Infant gaze following based on eye direction , 1998 .

[15]  R. Simons,et al.  Children's Conceptions and Use of Rules of Distributive Justice , 1979 .

[16]  J. Gomez.  Species comparative studies and cognitive development , 2005, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[17]  D. Muir,et al.  A demonstration of gaze following in 3- to 6-month-olds , 1997 .

[18]  Y. Benjamini,et al.  Controlling the false discovery rate: a practical and powerful approach to multiple testing , 1995 .

[19]  C. Hofsten,et al.  12-Month-Old Infants' Perception of Attention Direction in Static Video Images , 2005 .

[20]  C. Hofsten,et al.  The development of reactive saccade latencies , 2006, Experimental Brain Research.

[21]  P. Mundy,et al.  Individual differences and the development of joint attention in infancy. , 2007, Child development.

[22]  G. Butterworth,et al.  Towards a Mechanism of Joint Visual Attention in Human Infancy , 1980 .

[23]  T. Striano,et al.  Sensitivity to triadic attention in early infancy. , 2005, Developmental science.

[24]  C. Moore,et al.  Social Understanding at the End of the First Year of Life , 1994 .

[25]  P. Morissette,et al.  Joint visual attention and pointing in infancy: A longitudinal study of comprehension , 1995 .

[26]  S. Calkins,et al.  Toddler regulation of distress to frustrating events: Temperamental and maternal correlates. , 1998 .

[27]  C. Teuscher,et al.  Gaze following: why (not) learn it? , 2006, Developmental science.

[28]  T. Striano,et al.  Coordinated affect with mothers and strangers: A longitudinal analysis of joint engagement between 5 and 9 months of age , 2005 .

[29]  G. W. Rever.  Attachment and Loss. Vol. 1. Attachment , 1972 .

[30]  S. Baron-Cohen.  How to build a baby that can read minds: Cognitive mechanisms in mindreading. , 1994 .

[31]  R. Aslin.  What's in a look? , 2007, Developmental science.

[32]  G. Goodman,et al.  Child witness research and forensic interviews of young children: A review , 2007 .

[33]  C. Moore,et al.  The origins of joint visual attention in infants. , 1998, Developmental psychology.

[34]  S. Baron-Cohen.  The Eye Direction Detector (EDD) and the Shared Attention Mechanism (SAM): Two cases for evolutionar , 1995 .

[35]  Michael Tomasello,et al.  12- and 18-month-old infants follow gaze to spaces behind barriers. , 2004, Developmental science.

[36]  A. Neal,et al.  Individual differences in infant attention skills, joint attention, and emotion regulation behaviour , 2005 .

[37]  J. Bruner,et al.  The capacity for joint visual attention in the infant , 1975, Nature.

[38]  S. Ghirlanda,et al.  A century of generalization , 2003, Animal Behaviour.

[39]  Mark H. Johnson,et al.  Understanding the referential nature of looking: Infants’ preference for object-directed gaze , 2008, Cognition.

[40]  Vincent M. Reid,et al.  Social cognition in the first year , 2006, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[41]  P. Hauf,et al.  Object processing during a joint gaze following task , 2007 .

[42]  A. Meltzoff,et al.  The importance of eyes: how infants interpret adult looking behavior. , 2002, Developmental psychology.

[43]  C. Moore,et al.  The role of movement in the development of joint visual attention , 1997 .

[44]  G. Butterworth,et al.  What minds have in common is space : Spatial mechanisms serving joint visual attention in infancy , 1991 .

[45]  Jon Driver,et al.  Adult's Eyes Trigger Shifts of Visual Attention in Human Infants , 1998 .

[46]  A. Pick,et al.  Effects of gesture and target on 12- and 18-month-olds' joint visual attention to objects in front of or behind them. , 2000, Developmental psychology.

[47]  G. Csibra,et al.  Gaze Following in Human Infants Depends on Communicative Signals , 2008, Current Biology.

[48]  J. Stevenson.  The cultural origins of human cognition , 2001 .