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...

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Infant joint attention has been observed to be related to social-emotional outcomes in at-risk children. To address whether this relation is also evident in typically developing children, 52 children were tested at 12, 15, 24, and 30 months to examine associations between infant joint attention and social outcomes. Twelve-month initiating and responding to joint attention were related to 30-month social competence and externalizing behavior, even when accounting for 15-month temperament ratings, 24-month cognition and language, and demographic variables. These results suggest that, in addition to associations with language and cognition, infant joint attention reflects robust aspects of development that are related to individual differences in the emergence of social and behavioral competence in childhood.

This study examined longitudinal growth in gestures and words in infants at heightened (HR) vs. low risk (LR) for ASD. The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory was administered monthly from 8 to 14 months and at 18 and 24 months to caregivers of 14 HR infants diagnosed with ASD (HR-ASD), 27 HR infants with language delay (HR-LD), 51 HR infants with no diagnosis (HR-ND), and 28 LR infants. Few differences were obtained between LR and HR-ND infants, but HR-LD and HR-ASD groups differed in initial skill levels and growth patterns. While HR-LD infants grew at rates comparable to LR and HR-ND infants, growth was attenuated in the HR-ASD group, with trajectories progressively diverging from all other groups.