Infants’ abilities to respond to cues for joint attention vary by family socioeconomic status

Abstract

The influence of socioeconomic variability on language and cognitive development is present from toddlerhood to adolescence and calls for investigating its earliest manifestation. Response to joint attention (RJA) abilities constitute a foundational developmental milestone that are associated with future language, cognitive, and social skills. How aspects of the family home environment shape RJA skills is relatively unknown. We investigated associations between family socioeconomic status (SES) —both parent education and family percentage of the federal poverty level (FPL)— parent depressive and anxiety symptoms and infant RJA performance in a cross‐sectional sample of 173 infants aged 8–18 months and their parents from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds. Results suggest that, correcting for age and receptive language, infants in families with greater economic resources respond to relatively less redundant, more sophisticated cues for joint attention. Although parent depressive and anxiety symptoms are negatively correlated with SES, parent depressive and anxiety symptoms were not associated with infant RJA. These findings provide evidence of SES‐related differences in social cognitive development as early as infancy, calling on policymakers to address the inequities in the current socioeconomic landscape of the United States.

Birthweight moderates the association between chronological age and infants’ abilities to respond to cues for joint attention

“…In light of these findings, the present study included both chronological age and gestation duration in its models, rather than comparing infants matched on age corrected for degree of prematurity. Unsurprisingly, we found that infants become more sophisticated at reading RJA cues from adults as they age, similar to past work (Reilly et al., 2021; Stallworthy et al., 2021). In alignment with past findings of prematurity‐related deficits in early joint attention, findings from this study suggest that chronological and gestational age each positively predicts unique variation in early RJA.…”

“…In alignment with past findings of prematurity‐related deficits in early joint attention, findings from this study suggest that chronological and gestational age each positively predicts unique variation in early RJA. We also found negative associations between RJA variation and both chronological age and gestation duration, suggesting that infants become more consistent in their responding with age (similar to past work; Reilly et al., 2021; Stallworthy et al., 2021). Unlike past studies that typically collapse potentially meaningful variation in gestational age into the categories of ‘‘preterm’’ versus ‘‘full term,’’ the present study modeled a wide range of gestation durations continuously.…”

“…RJA was measured using the Dimensional Joint Attention Assessment (DJAA) (Elison et al., 2013; Reilly et al., 2021; Stallworthy et al., 2021), a naturalistic play‐based behavioral assessment designed to measure RJA cue‐reading abilities in the first 2 years of life. The DJAA takes approximately 15 min and was administered by a trained experimenter.…”

“…Responding to joint attention (RJA) refers to an infant's ability to detect and follow the direction of the gaze and gestures of others to share attention to a common reference point (Mundy & Jarrold, 2010). The ability to respond to increasingly less redundant, more sophisticated adult‐like RJA cues is an important dimension upon which infants vary early in life (Elison et al., 2013; Stallworthy et al., 2021) and may be influenced by aspects of early experience (Reilly et al., 2021). RJA is likely enabled by multiple interacting neural networks (e.g., fronto‐temporal, fronto‐parietal) as well as direct experience with social interactions during early sensitive periods (Mundy, 2018; Mundy & Jarrold, 2010).…”

Responding to joint attention as a developmental catalyst: Longitudinal associations with language and social responsiveness

“…Conditioning DJAA mean scores on age. As presented in Supplementary Information, and consistent with previous reports (Elison et al, 2013;Reilly et al, 2021;Stallworthy, Lasch, et al, 2022), age was significantly correlated with DJAA mean score, r(422) = .57, p < .001. To assess associations between the developmental sophistication of RJA performance and later developmental abilities more precisely, we conditioned DJAA scores on participants' age at the time of DJAA assessment.…”