Proactive or reactive? Neural oscillatory insight into the leader-follower dynamics of early infant-caregiver interaction

Abstract

We know that infants’ ability to coordinate attention with others towards the end of the first year is fundamental to language acquisition and social cognition (Carpenter et al., 1998). Yet, we understand little about the neural and cognitive mechanisms driving infant attention in shared interaction: do infants play a proactive role in creating episodes of joint attention? Recording EEG from 12-month-old infants whilst they engaged in table-top play with their caregiver, we examined the ostensive signals and neural activity preceding and following infant- vs. adult-led joint attention. Contrary to traditional theories of socio-communicative development (Tomasello et al., 2007), infant-led joint attention episodes appeared largely reactive: they were not associated with increased theta power, a neural marker of endogenously driven attention, or ostensive signals before the initiation. Infants were, however, sensitive to whether their initiations were responded to. When caregivers joined their attentional focus, infants showed increased alpha suppression, a pattern of neural activity associated with predictive processing. Our results suggest that at 10-12 months, infants are not yet proactive in creating joint attention. They do, however, anticipate behavioural contingency, a potentially foundational mechanism for the emergence of intentional communication (Smith & Breazeal, 2007).

Dialogic Book-Sharing as a Privileged Intersubjective Space

“…Thus, evidence suggests that there is an expectation that our own gaze will be followed, with distinct motivational consequences when this occurs. Awareness that our gaze has been followed takes place very quickly, in less than half a second (Phillips et al, 2022 ), and even this brief time is experienced as compressed, via a “temporal, or intentional, binding effect” (David et al, 2008 ). Relatedly, when another person's gaze-shift occurs rapidly after our own, we sense it as being connected to our own gaze, and this leads to a positive, implicit sense of our agency (Pfeiffer et al, 2012 ; Haggard, 2017 ; Stephenson et al, 2018 ).…”

“…Such benefits, like those of having one's gaze followed, may, in part, accrue from “action-oriented predictive processing” effects, whereby one's motor intentions elicit predictions about the results of our actions (Clark, 2013 ), with the subsequent, anticipated, events then evoking increased neural responsiveness (Engel et al, 2001 ). These mechanisms, largely studied under experimental conditions, could potentially occur in natural social interactions (de Hamilton, 2021 ; Monroy C. et al, 2021 ), including in book-sharing, such that infant attentional and gestural behaviors entailing anticipation and prediction of parental responses then elicit greater neural activation when those responses occur (Southgate et al, 2009 ; Monroy C. D. et al, 2019 ; Phillips et al, 2022 ).…”

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

“…We also highlight the need to consider bidirectional influences. Whilst co-regulation has often been conceptualised as an adult-driven process, in infancy and in childhood (Bornstein, 2013;Phillips et al, 2021), more recent, dynamic systems perspectives have emphasised that the behavioural patterns of each individual partner can only be understood through consideration of bidirectional process (Fogel, 2017a;Hollenstein, 2015;L. Smith & Gasser, 2005;Yu & Smith, 2017).…”

“…Recent research recording neural activity during online social interactions with infants has shown that infant attention is structured through interactive but asymmetric, infant-led processes that operate across the caregiver-child dyad: longer infant attention durations associate with both reactive and dynamic modulation in caregiver behaviours, as well as increases in infants' own endogenous cognitive activity (Phillips et al, under review). During naturalistic triadic interactions, infants are behaviourally and neurally highly responsive to when a caregiver responds contingently to them (Murray & Trevarthen, 1986;Phillips et al, 2021;Tamis-LeMonda et al, 2014). For example, when caregivers respond consistently and contingently to modulations in infant behaviour, this increases the amount and complexity of infants' communicative cues over the duration of an interaction (Goldstein & Schwade, 2008;J.…”

“…But in fact, the picture emerging from the micro-dynamic analyses and dual-brain studies suggests that attention co-regulation is in fact quite similar to arousal co-regulation. Children rarely use ostensive signalling during early interactions (Beebe et al, 2016;Phillips et al, 2021;Yu & Smith, 2013) and can be remarkably insensitive to caregivers' ostensive signalling (Marriott Haresign et al, 2023). But during face-to-face, tabletop interactions, both shared entrainment (Moreno-Nunez et al, 2017;Wass et al, 2021)) and interactive contingencies exist.…”