Revisiting how we operationalize joint attention

Abstract

Parent-child interactions support the development of a wide range of socio-cognitive abilities in young children. As infants become increasingly mobile, the nature of these interactions change from person-oriented to object-oriented, with the latter relying on children's emerging ability to engage in joint attention. Joint attention is acknowledged to be a foundational ability in early child development, broadly speaking, yet its operationalization has varied substantially over the course of several decades of developmental research devoted to its characterization. Here, we outline two broad research perspectives-social and associative accounts-on what constitutes joint attention. Differences center on the criteria for what qualifies as joint attention and regarding the hypothesized developmental mechanisms that underlie the ability. After providing a theoretical overview, we introduce a joint attention coding scheme that we have developed iteratively based on careful reading of the literature and our own data coding experiences. This coding scheme provides objective guidelines for characterizing mulitmodal parent-child interactions. The need for such guidelines is acute given the widespread use of this and other developmental measures to assess atypically developing populations. We conclude with a call for open discussion about the need for researchers to include a clear description of what qualifies as joint attention in publications pertaining to joint attention, as well as details about their coding. We provide instructions for using our coding scheme in the service of starting such a discussion.

Early triadic interactions in the first year of life: a systematic review on object-mediated shared encounters

“…Precisely, the lack of consideration given to objects in early interactions is another of the problems underlying their conceptualisation. From classical positions, triadic interactions with objects are based on episodes of joint attention, which can be understood from different perspectives ( Gabouer and Bortfeld, 2021 ). On the one hand, from an associative perspective they would depend on the infant’s visual orientation system and its ability to follow the gaze of the other ( Butterworth, 1991 ), which is considered to occur in the absence of interactive processes from six to 18 months of age ( Butterworth and Jarrett, 1991 ; Corkum and Moore, 1998 ).…”

Mindfulness Prevents Depression and Psychopathology in Elderly People with Mild to Moderate Alzheimer’s Disease: A Randomized Clinical Trial

“…The main objective of this work was to show that a psychological treatment program based on mindfulness, from the joint attention approach [ 36 ], is useful to prevent the onset of comorbid psychopathology throughout the course of mild-moderate AD. Whereas some studies have shown that mindfulness-based programs improve depressive symptoms [ 17–23 ] and others based on MBSR decrease BPSD in advanced stages [ 24, 25 ], this is the first study to show that mindfulness practice in a population of AD patients without psychopathology at baseline prevents the onset of BPSD, especially anxiety and depression.…”

“…The third conclusion is the main novelty of this study, the application of mindfulness jointly with caregivers in the development of activities of daily living, based on the paradigm of joint attention [ 36 ]. Joint attention is the essential condition on which communication and cognitive development are built.…”

The Effect of Interactive Hand Puppet on Joint Attention Ability in Children with Autism

“…In communication, it is not only the mouth that speaks but the eyes and body movements as well. From the age of nine months, children must be able to present joint attention, which is a necessary skill for observing their future growth [4].…”