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[Assessment of joint attention skill in at-risk infants during follow-up outpatient examination]
Yasushi Fujii1, Kaori Amakata, Kaori Ogita
1Department of Education, Liberal Arts, Teikyo University, Tokyo. y-fujii@med.teikyo-u.ac.jp
Insights
A new method effectively assesses infant joint attention skills. Most infants develop this crucial social skill by nine months, with early differences observed between genders.
Area of Science:
- Developmental psychology
- Infant behavior
- Social cognition
Context:
- Assessing joint attention is vital for understanding infant social development.
- Existing methods may be time-consuming or require specialized equipment.
- Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) follow-up provides a critical window for developmental assessment.
Purpose:
- To introduce and validate a novel, simple method for assessing joint attention in infants.
- To determine the developmental trajectory of joint attention skills between 6 and 12 months corrected age.
- To identify potential sex-based differences in the emergence of joint attention.
Summary:
- A study involving 180 infants (297 examinations) assessed joint attention using a novel block-based method during routine outpatient follow-up.
- Joint attention was observed in 60% of 6-month-olds and over 90% of 9-month-olds.
- Boys demonstrated joint attention skills more frequently than girls at 6 months.
Impact:
- This new method offers a quick, practical, and cost-effective tool for evaluating infant joint attention during standard pediatric examinations.
- Early identification of joint attention development can inform targeted interventions for infants.
- Findings contribute to normative data on early social-cognitive development in infants.
Abstract:
We assessed the joint attention skill of infants by a novel method. One hundred eighty infants who were discharged from the NICU of Teikyo University Hospital and subsequently brought to the outpatient clinic for follow-up examinations between 6 and 12 months of corrected age (297 examinations in total) were entered into the study. Infant were sitting on the mother's knees facing the examiner. After confirming the infant's visual axis to the examiner's eyes, the examiner looked at blocks held in the infant's visual field. When the infant looked at the blocks by perceiving the examiner's gaze, the infant was judged to have joint attention skill. Then, when the infant looked at the examiner again, the attitude was estimated as an action for reconfirmation. Sixty percent of the infants at 6 months of age showed joint attention skill, and more than 90 % of infants showed this skill at 9 months of age. At 6 months of age, boys showed that skill significantly more frequently than girls. This new method is very easy to perform, uses only small blocks and can be completed within a few minutes. Therefore, we considered this new method useful for the assessment of joint attention skill in infants during periodic outpatient health clinic examination.
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