Endogenous oscillatory rhythms and interactive contingencies jointly influence infant attention during early infant-caregiver interaction

Abstract

Almost all early cognitive development takes place in social contexts. At the moment, however, we understand little about the neural and cognitive mechanisms that drive infant attention during social interactions. Recording EEG during naturalistic caregiver-infant interactions (N=66), we compare two different accounts. Attentional scaffolding perspectives emphasise the role of the caregiver in structuring the interaction, whilst active learning models focus on motivational factors, endogenous to the infant, that guide their attention. Our results show that, already by 12 months, intrinsic cognitive processes control infant attention: fluctuations in endogenous oscillatory neural activity associated with changes in infant attentiveness, and predicted the length of infant attention episodes towards objects. In comparison, infant attention was not forwards-predicted by caregiver gaze, or modulations in the spectral and temporal properties of the caregiver's speech. Instead, caregivers rapidly modulated their behaviours in response to changes in infant attention and cognitive engagement, and greater reactive changes associated with longer infant attention. Our findings suggest that shared attention develops through interactive by asymmetric, infant-led processes that operate across the caregiver-child dyad.

Annual Research Review: ‘There, the dance is – at the still point of the turning world’ – dynamic systems perspectives on coregulation and dysregulation during early development

“…Caregiver speech and in particular, contingent caregiver vocalisations (i.e. those that occur specifically in reaction to an attention shift from the child) are especially predictive of child attention and learning (Goupil et al, 2023;Mason, Kirkpatrick, Schwade, & Goldstein, 2019;Suarez-Rivera et al, 2019). This shows how sociocommunicative development and attention development are inter-related.…”

“…Caregivers respond to decreases in child attention by making themselves more salient (e.g. by increasing the rate of modulation of the voice); but then, when children's attention is re‐engaged, they downregulate their salience (Phillips et al., 2023) and use other modalities such as task‐related caregiver talk to actively prolong child attention durations (Slone, Abney, Smith, & Yu, 2023; Suarez‐Rivera, Smith, & Yu, 2019). As with arousal regulation, this suggests that active attention regulation involves a mixture of first upregulating to match the child's state (positive feedback) and then downregulating (negative feedback).…”

“…And a number of studies have shown that all child–caregiver interactions are bidirectional (i.e. caregiver influences child and child influences caregiver), but early interactions in particular are relatively more asymmetric (Beebe et al., 2016; Phillips et al., 2023; Sander, 1977; Somers, Luecken, et al., 2021). (In other words, the caregiver adapts to a young child relatively more than the child adapts to the caregiver.…”

“…Similarly, when we discuss coregulation and attention in section 3, we shall review evidence suggesting that, in response to child inattention, caregivers first upregulate their own salience (e.g. the pitch inflexion patterns in their voice), and then downregulate them when the child becomes attentive (Phillips et al., 2023). Again, this is a mixture of first positive and then negative feedback.…”

“…Just as with the social communicative behaviours discussed in the previous section, there is evidence that these active regulatory influences on attention are relatively more asymmetric (caregivers adapting to children, more than vice versa), but become less asymmetric over time. For example, recent research that recorded dual EEG and behavioural microdynamics has documented how caregivers dynamically modulate their gaze behaviour and vocal behaviour contingent on moment‐by‐moment variability in the child's behaviour, and how these relationships become less asymmetric over time (Phillips et al., 2023). Extensive evidence also shows that children are behaviourally and neurally highly responsive to when a caregiver responds contingently to them (Murray & Trevarthen, 1986; Phillips et al., 2021; Tamis‐LeMonda, Kuchirko, & Song, 2014) showing the importance of active attention regulation.…”