Infants' visual sustained attention is higher during joint play than solo play: is this due to increased endogenous attention control or exogenous stimulus capture?

Abstract

Previous research has suggested that when a social partner, such as a parent, pays attention to an object, this increases the attention that infants pay to that object during spontaneous, naturalistic play. There are two contrasting reasons why this might be: first, social context may influence increases in infants' endogenous (voluntary) attention control; second, social settings may offer increased opportunities for exogenous attentional capture. To differentiate these possibilities, we compared 12-month-old infants' naturalistic attention patterns in two settings: Solo Play and Joint Play with a social partner (the parent). Consistent with previous research, we found that infants' look durations toward play objects were longer during Joint Play, and that moments of inattentiveness were fewer, and shorter. Follow-up analyses, conducted to differentiate the two above-proposed hypotheses, were more consistent with the latter hypothesis. We found that infants' rate of change of attentiveness was faster during Joint Play than Solo Play, suggesting that internal attention factors, such as attentional inertia, may influence looking behaviour less during Joint Play. We also found that adults' attention forwards-predicted infants' subsequent attention more than vice versa, suggesting that adults' behaviour may drive infants' behaviour. Finally, we found that mutual gaze did not directly facilitate infant attentiveness. Overall, our results suggest that infants spend more time attending to objects during Joint Play than Solo Play, but that these differences are more likely attributable to increased exogenous attentional scaffolding from the parent during social play, rather than to increased endogenous attention control from the infant.

Parental neural responsivity to infants’ visual attention: how mature brains scaffold immature brains during social interaction

“…Particularly of interest was Figure 3c, which suggested that negative-lag relationships (attention forward-predicting EEG power) were similar across the Solo and Joint Play conditions, but that positive-lag relationships (EEG power forward-predicting attention) were present only during Solo Play. These results are consistent with our previous research suggesting that endogenous factors, such as attentional inertia, influence infants' attention more during solo (non-interactive) play than during joint play ( [25]). Taken together, our results suggest that infants' endogenous neural control over attention is greater during solo play.…”

“…A previous report based on these data, that contained behavioural findings only, reported that infants showed longer look durations towards the object during Joint Play (JP) relative to Solo Play (SP), together with shorter periods of inattention (see Supplementary Figure S1) ( [25]). Supplementary Figure S2 compares EEG power for infants and parents between Solo Play and Joint Play; no significant between-condition differences were observed.…”

“…Recent research has contrasted two explanations for this finding: first, that social context may cause infants to be more attentive because they are more in control of their own attention behaviours. Second, that social context may offer increased opportunities for parents to scaffold their child's attention using external attention cues -so infants are more attentive even though they are less in control of their own attention behaviours ( [25]). Timeseries analyses conducted to evaluate these two hypotheses provided evidence more consistent with the latter hypothesis: first, infants' rate of change of attentiveness was faster during Joint Play than Solo Play, suggesting that internal attention factors, such as attentional inertia, may influence looking behaviour less during Joint Play ( [26]).…”

“…Based on previous research ( [10,13]) we expected that fluctuations in infant Theta activity would associate with, and forward-predict, fluctuations in infant attentiveness. Based on our previous research ( [25]) we predicted that the forward-predictive relationship between infants' own endogenous brain activity and infants' attentiveness would be higher during Solo Play than Joint Play, due to the increased prevalence of exogenous parental attention scaffolding (and capture) during Joint Play. Further, since previous research indicates that parental responsiveness is an influential factor for early developing cognition ( [35,36]), we also examined whether parental neural responsivity had an effect on infants' attention.…”

“…Details of ethical permissions obtained are given in the Supplementary Materials. [25]) Experimental set-up. Infants were seated in a high chair, and a table was positioned immediately in front so that toys on the table were within easy reach (see Figure 1).…”