What are the building blocks of parent–infant coordinated attention in free-flowing interaction?

Drew H. Abney, Sumarga H. Suanda, Linda B. Smith, Chen Yu

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

25 Citations (Scopus)

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.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)871-887
Number of pages17
JournalInfancy
Volume25
Issue number6
Early online date6 Oct 2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Nov 2020

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