At around 1 year of age, human infants display a number of new behaviors that seem to indicate a newly emerging understanding of other persons as intentional beings whose attention to outside objects may be shared, followed into, and directed in various ways. These behaviors have mostly been studied separately. In the current study, we investigated the most important of these behaviors together as they emerged in a single group of 24 infants between 9 and 15 months of age. At each of seven monthly visits, we measured joint attentional engagement, gaze and point following, imitation of two different kinds of actions on objects, imperative and declarative gestures, and comprehension and production of language. We also measured several nonsocial-cognitive skills as a point of comparison. We report two studies. The focus of the first study was the initial emergence of infants' social-cognitive skills and how these skills are related to one another developmentally. We found a reliable pattern of emergence: Infants progressed from sharing to following to directing others' attention and behavior. The nonsocial skills did not emerge predictably in this developmental sequence. Furthermore, correlational analyses showed that the ages of emergence of all pairs of the social-cognitive skills or their components were inter-related. The focus of the second study was the social interaction of infants and their mothers, especially with regard to their skills of joint attentional engagement (including mothers' use of language to follow into or direct infants' attention) and how these skills related to infants' early communicative competence. Our measures of communicative competence included not only language production, as in previous studies, but also language comprehension and gesture production. It was found that two measures--the amount of time infants spent in joint engagement with their mothers and the degree to which mothers used language that followed into their infant's focus of attention--predicted infants' earliest skills of gestural and linguistic communication. Results of the two studies are discussed in terms of their implications for theories of social-cognitive development, for theories of language development, and for theories of the process by means of which human children become fully participating members of the cultural activities and processes into which they are born.

Social Cognition, joint attention and communicative Competence from 9 to 15 months of age

Let's read! We will often find out this sentence everywhere. When still being a kid, mom used to order us to always read, so did the teacher. Some books are fully read in a week and we need the obligation to support reading. What about now? Do you still love reading? Is reading only for you who have obligation? Absolutely not! We here offer you a new book enPDFd the perception of the visual world to read.

The Perception of the Visual World. By James J. Gibson. U.S.A.: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1950 (George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., London). Price 35s.

The eyes have it: the neuroethology, function and evolution of social gaze

Self‐knowledge is based on several different forms of information, so distinct that each one essentially establishes a different ‘self. The ecological self is the self as directly perceived with respect to the immediate physical environment; the interpersonal self, also directly perceived, is established by species‐specific signals of emotional rapport and communication; the extended self is based on memory and anticipation; the private self appears when we discover that our conscious experiences are exclusively our own; the conceptual self or ‘self‐concept’ draws its meaning from a network of socially‐based assumptions and theories about human nature in general and ourselves in particular. Although these selves are rarely experienced as distinct (because they are held together by specific forms of stimulus information), they differ in their developmental histories, in the accuracy with which we can know them, in the pathologies to which they are subject, and generally in what they contribute to ...

Five kinds of self‐knowledge

The overall goal of this target article is to demonstrate a mechanism for an embodied cognition. The particular vehicle is a much-studied, but still widely debated phenomenon seen in 7-12 month-old-infants. In Piaget's classic "A-not-B error," infants who have successfully uncovered a toy at location "A" continue to reach to that location even after they watch the toy hidden in a nearby location "B." Here, we question the traditional explanations of the error as an indicator of infants' concepts of objects or other static mental structures. Instead, we demonstrate that the A-not-B error and its previously puzzling contextual variations can be understood by the coupled dynamics of the ordinary processes of goal-directed actions: looking, planning, reaching, and remembering. We offer a formal dynamic theory and model based on cognitive embodiment that both simulates the known A-not-B effects and offers novel predictions that match new experimental results. The demonstration supports an embodied view by casting the mental events involved in perception, planning, deciding, and remembering in the same analogic dynamic language as that used to describe bodily movement, so that they may be continuously meshed. We maintain that this mesh is a pre-eminently cognitive act of "knowing" not only in infancy but also in everyday activities throughout the life span.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/1C2802AA1C508444DD6D3C3289141CD8/S0140525X01003910a.pdf/div-class-title-the-dynamics-of-embodiment-a-field-theory-of-infant-perseverative-reaching-div.pdf

The dynamics of embodiment: a field theory of infant perseverative reaching.

Three experiments are reported which aim to distinguish between mechanisms that might serve joint visual attention between human infants and adults. Between 6 and 18 months of age, the infant will adjust his (or her) line of gaze contingent on a change in the adult's focus of attention but behaves as if the adult is referring to loci within the infants' visual space. Thus, if the adult looks behind the infant, the infant scans the space in front of him. Various explanations of this phenomenon and of the capacity for joint visual attention are discussed.

Towards a Mechanism of Joint Visual Attention in Human Infancy

The effect of conflicting visual, and mechanical proprioceptive information on postural stability was compared in two groups of infants. The older group could sit or stand unsupported, while the younger group could sit but could not yet stand. The results suggest that visual proprioception functions to maintain postural stability before infants have learned to stand.

Visual proprioception and postural stability in infancy: A developmental study.

Object disappearance and error in Piaget's Stage IV task.

Infants with Down's syndrome are delayed in achieving motor milestones. When they first sit unsupported a discrepancy between visual and mechanical-vestibular indices of postural stability is less disruptive of their balance than in normal infants. Yet when they first stand unsupported, the same discrepancy disrupts balance more in these infants than in the normal infants. The effect of discrepant visual feedback also differs systematically as a function of the infants' experience of the posture. Monitoring posture in relation to a stable visual surround appears to be fundamental to the normal development of motor control.

Visual calibration of posture in normal and motor retarded Down's syndrome infants.

Two experiments are reported which demonstrate that the newborn human infant can make eye movements which are spatially coordinated with the locus of a sound. The results suggest that there may be an innate coordination of auditory and visual—motor space.

George Butterworth

Papers

Towards a Mechanism of Joint Visual Attention in Human Infancy

Visual proprioception and postural stability in infancy: A developmental study.

Object disappearance and error in Piaget's Stage IV task.

Visual calibration of posture in normal and motor retarded Down's syndrome infants.

Coordination of Auditory and Visual Space in Newborn Human Infants