Driven from distraction: how infants respond to parents' attempts to elicit and re-direct their attention.
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.
Deák
Gedeon O
GO
Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, 9500 Gilman Dr., San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0515, USA. deak@cogsci.ucsd.edu
Walden
Tedra A
TA
Kaiser
Marygrace Yale
MY
Lewis
Audra
A
D000367:Age Factors; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D002657:Child Development; D003142:Communication; D003463:Cues; D005133:Eye Movements; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D018730:Infant Behavior; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D002666:Psychology, Child; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology