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Abstract The present article investigated the composition of different joint gaze components used to operationalize various types of coordinated attention between parents and infants and which types of coordinated attention were associated with future vocabulary size. Twenty‐five 9‐month‐old infants and their parents wore head‐mounted eye trackers as they played with objects together. With high‐density gaze data, a variety of coordinated attention bout types were quantitatively measured by combining different gaze components, such as mutual gaze, joint object looks, face looks, and triadic gaze patterns. The key components of coordinated attention that were associated with vocabulary size at 12 and 15 months included the simultaneous combination of parent triadic gaze and infant object looking. The results from this article are discussed in terms of the importance of parent attentional monitoring and infant sustained attention for language development.
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Parent attention‐orienting behavior is associated with neural entropy in infancy
Abstract Parents use joint attention to direct infants to environmental stimuli. We hypothesized that infants whose parents provide more bids for joint attention will display a more complex neural response when viewing social scenes. Sixty‐one 8‐month‐old infants underwent electroencephalography (EEG) while viewing videos of joint‐ and parallel‐play and participated in a free play interaction. EEG data was analyzed using multiscale entropy, which quantifies neural variability. Free play interactions assessed parent alternating gaze, a behavioral mechanism for directing attention to environmental cues. We found a significant positive association between parent alternating gaze and neural entropy in frontal and central regions. These results suggest a relationship between parent behavior and infant neural mechanisms that regulate social attention, underlying the importance of parental cues in forming neural networks.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2021791
- PAR ID:
- 10573626
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Infancy
- Volume:
- 30
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 1525-0008
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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