Joint Attention In Children

Language is an important part of human communication, and can be very complex to understand. Language involves a huge amount of vocabulary, that is developed from phoneme, which are simple sounds, to morpheme, which are words that have meaning. These are combined to form a syntax, a combination of words to form a sentence with meaning. (Mitchell & Ziegler, 2007) A question that has intrigued psychologists for many years now is, how did we learn this complex way of communicating with no formal instruction? It has been found that when trying to learn a new language as an adult, we find it very difficult to understand new sounds and rules associated with that language. Lenneberg (1967) proposed that there is a ‘critical period’ when children are

Joint attention refers to “when a child and adult are focused on the same thing, and when they are both aware the focus of attention is shared” (Baldwin, 1995). It is suggested that infants acquire joint attention and begin to follow the gazes of adults to add a third party to learn from others. Scafie and Bruner (1975) found that children aged 2-14 months began to understand that others have different attention spans and interests by following adult’s gazes, and that infants first words are often related to objects of joint attention. Carptenter, Nagell and Tomasello (1998) conducted a study in which they tested children’s socio-cultural skills through structured tasks and observed the mother’s and child’s joint attention. They also tested the child’s language ability by asking mothers to assess a variety of words that their child could understand or say. Findings showed a pattern of joint attention developing, followed by communication gestures and finally referential language. Attention following, such as following an adult’s gaze, was positively correlated with consequential development of referential language. This suggests that children need to understand adult’s communicative intentions to learn that a new sound has meaning to something the adult is trying to get the child to pay attention to, and therefore the child can learn and extend their vocabulary. In this sense, language acquisition is related to Theory of Mind, as children need to understand that others have different intentions than their own. It is argued that this understanding is innate (Treverthen, 1979), however there is more evidence to argue that this is a learnt process. Tomasello (1992) believed that language acquisition is another social skill, and that though input and environmental settings the child is encouraged to learn new language skills. Smith (1995) argued that language