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Driven from distraction: how infants respond to parents' attempts to elicit and re-direct their attention
Gedeon O Deák1, Tedra A Walden, Marygrace Yale Kaiser
1Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, 9500 Gilman Dr., San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0515, USA. deak@cogsci.ucsd.edu
Insights
Parents
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Cognitive Science
- Infant Behavior
Background:
- Understanding how infants learn to share attention is crucial for cognitive and social development.
- Parental cues play a significant role in guiding infant attention, but the specific mechanisms are complex.
- Research is needed to differentiate the impact of various parental cues on infant attention-sharing.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how parents' verbal and non-verbal cues influence infant attention-sharing in a multi-object environment.
- To determine the effectiveness of different parental cues (gaze, pointing, verbalizations) in directing infant attention.
- To examine age-related differences in infant responses to parental attention cues.
Main Methods:
- Fifteen- and 21-month-old infants participated in a toy-play experiment with their parents.
- Parents used gaze shifts, pointing gestures, and verbalizations (eliciting or directing) to direct infant attention.
- Gaze occlusion trials were included to assess the role of visual contact.
Main Results:
- Infants rarely followed simple gaze shifts but frequently followed gaze combined with pointing or directing verbalizations.
- Attention-eliciting verbalizations increased infant engagement with the parent.
- Gaze occlusion diminished infant responses to directing verbalizations, and older infants showed increased responses to eliciting verbalizations.
Conclusions:
- Combined parental cues (gaze + point/verbalization) are more effective than gaze alone for directing infant attention.
- The development of attention-sharing is influenced by age and the type of parental cue.
- Infant receptive vocabulary did not predict attention-sharing, suggesting that early attention mechanisms are distinct from language acquisition.
Abstract:
This experiment examined how parents' verbal and non-verbal behavioral cues cause infants to shift and share attention within environments where many objects compete for infants' attention. Fifteen- and 21-month-old infants played with toys while their parent periodically shifted attention to a distal object within a larger array. Parents' attention-shifts were indicated by a change in direction of gaze, a pointing gesture, and/or verbalizations. Verbalizations were either attention-eliciting or attention-directing. In some trials parents covered their eyes to occlude line-of-gaze. Both ages seldom followed simple gaze shifts, but frequently followed gaze with-points or gaze-with-directing verbalizations. Attention-eliciting verbalizations increased infants' looks to the parent. Gaze occlusion reduced infants' responses to directing verbalizations. Responses to eliciting verbalizations increased with age. Infant receptive vocabulary did not predict attention-sharing, even when parents named objects (i.e., directing verbalizations). Implications for development of attention-sharing, language and understanding of visual attention are discussed.
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