Temperament moderates responsiveness to joint attention in 11-month-old infants.
The present study investigates the relationship between individual differences in children's temperament and their responsiveness to joint attention. Twenty-five 11-month-old children (12 girls and 13 boys) were presented with a gaze-following task in a laboratory setting, and parent reports of temperament were collected. Findings indicate that children's ability to correctly follow an experimenter's gaze differed as a function of individual temperament predispositions. Children high in perceptual sensitivity and negative affect engaged in relatively less frequent gaze-following, consistent with reports from previous research. However analysis of the dimension of orienting/effortful control produced an unexpected finding; that children low in effortful control were relatively more likely to respond to joint attentional bids. Overall, these findings are consistent with a view of temperament as a moderator of children's engagement in joint attention, and raise the possibility that joint attention may be a mechanism underlying previous reports of temperament-language relationships.
Todd
James T
JT
Department of Psychology, Florida International University, Miami, FL, United States.
Dixon
Wallace E
WE
D000339:Affect; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001007:Anxiety; D001288:Attention; D005133:Eye Movements; D005239:Fear; D005260:Female; D019416:Head Movements; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D018730:Infant Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D010290:Parents; D010556:Personality Tests; D011581:Psychological Tests; D012919:Social Behavior; D013694:Temperament