Shared focus in mother—child joint activity in the second year of life

Abstract

Shared focus between mother and child during joint activity was examined. Ten dyads were observed at 16 and 20 months. We found that the level of conventionality expressed by shared focus inmaws with age. The activity becomes more oriented towards the cultural aspects of the objects than to material aspects, and social games become more oriented towards symbolic and linguistic aspects than to practical ones. Moreover, we found that the content of the game influences the function of the child's utterances both at 16 and at 20 months. These results point to the cultural specification of joint activity, which can be viewed as mediating the development of intersubjectivity as well as individual behaviour.

Developmental Trajectories for Mother–Infant Coregulation in the Second Year of Life

“…The gap between the first display of coordinated attention and its use in social play may be owed to the communicative demands that social play places on young children. As we found in previous studies (Aureli, 1994; Camaioni & Aureli, 2002; Camaioni, Aureli, Bellagamba & Fogel, 2003), social play in the second year of life provides mothers and infants with a privileged context for sharing meanings: first at a literal level, when the infants are at the beginning of the year and are able to act upon the toys only in a functional manner; second at a conventional level by the middle of the year, when infants begin to use toys in an adult‐like manner; and finally at a symbolic level toward the end of the second year, with infants beginning to refer to the toys verbally. Therefore, social play, far from being just a playful occasion for mothers and infants to have fun together, works as a special form of triadic interaction, suited to introducing infants to the domains of cultural artifacts, such as conventional norms and symbolic language (Bruner, 1975, 1982; Tomasello, 1999).…”