Attention-sensitive signalling by 7- to 20-month-old infants in a comparative perspective
Mawa Dafreville1, Michèle Guidetti1, Marie Bourjade1,2
1CLLE, Université de Toulouse, CNRS, Toulouse, France.
Insights
Infants learn to adjust their communication based on their mother's attention, developing pragmatic skills crucial for language acquisition. This study tracks the early development of attention-sensitive signaling from 7 to 20 months.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Pragmatics
- Evolutionary Linguistics
Background:
- Attention-sensitive signalling is a pragmatic skill where signallers adapt communication to the recipient's attentional state.
- Understanding its development in infants is key to language acquisition and evolutionary history.
Purpose of the Study:
- To provide comprehensive evidence for the onset and development of attention-sensitive signalling in human infants aged 7–20 months.
- To investigate the influence of maternal factors (visual attention, infant-directed speech, tactile contact) on infant signalling adjustments.
- To explore the significance of these skills for language acquisition and evolutionary origins.
Main Methods:
- Studied 30 mother-infant dyads across three developmental periods: 7–10, 11–14, and 15–20 months.
- Observed interactions in naturalistic settings.
- Classified infant signals by sensory modality and analyzed proportions relative to maternal visual attention, infant-directed speech, and tactile contact.
Main Results:
- Maternal visual attention and infant-directed speech significantly influenced the onset and development of infants' communicative adjustments.
- Infants first inhibited silent-visual signals (unimodal adjustment) towards inattentive mothers before deploying audible or contact signals (cross-modal adjustment).
- Maternal infant-directed speech facilitated unimodal adjustment, preference for oral over gestural signals, and audio-visual signal combinations. Breakdowns in maternal attention increased audible-oral signals.
Conclusions:
- Attention-sensitive signalling emerges and develops significantly between 7 and 20 months in human infants.
- Maternal scaffolding, particularly through infant-directed speech, plays a crucial role in developing these pragmatic skills.
- The findings suggest a link between shared attentional resources in parent-infant interactions and the evolution of modern language.
Abstract:
Attention-sensitive signalling is the pragmatic skill of signallers who adjust the modality of their communicative signals to their recipient's attention state. This study provides the first comprehensive evidence for its onset and development in 7-to 20-month-olds human infants, and underlines its significance for language acquisition and evolutionary history. Mother-infant dyads (N = 30) were studied in naturalistic settings, sampled according to three developmental periods (in months); [7-10], [11-14], and [15-20]. Infant's signals were classified by dominant perceptible sensory modality and proportions compared according to their mother's visual attention, infant-directed speech and tactile contact. Maternal visual attention and infant-directed speech were influential on the onset and steepness of infants' communicative adjustments. The ability to inhibit silent-visual signals towards visually inattentive mothers (unimodal adjustment) predated the ability to deploy audible-or-contact signals in this case (cross-modal adjustment). Maternal scaffolding of infant's early pragmatic skills through her infant-directed speech operates on the facilitation of infant's unimodal adjustment, the preference for oral over gestural signals, and the audio-visual combinations of signals. Additionally, breakdowns in maternal visual attention are associated with increased use of the audible-oral modality/channel. The evolutionary role of the sharing of attentional resources between parents and infants into the emergence of modern language is discussed.
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