Parents support prolonged infant visual attention to an object through engaged eyes, hands and talk

What is it about?

Children develop in a social context; Parents support the process through which young infants develop mature behaviors. In this article we show that parent's engagement with the object that the child visually attends to during play can support the maintenance and focus of infant visual attention towards that same object. Infant attention to an object was longer when the parent looked at the object attended to by the infant at the same time. Infant attention was also longer when parents touched the object and talked. This article suggests that multimodal parental engagement through eyes, hands and talk is the ideal type of support for infant sustained attention that parents should provide while infants play.

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Why is it important?

The ability to sustain attention by an infant is important for learning and is predictive of language development, self-regulation and academic achievement later in life. Here we show the exact ways in which social partners support the occurrence of sustained attention during play. Moreover, in this article we propose that "joint attention" during play is characterized not only by the parent and infant looking at the same object as it has been traditionally defined, but as multimodal event in which there is a entire suite of parent behaviors that accompany and support the infant's look to an object. Finally, the results suggest that parents and their behaviors during play could be a source of individual differences in the development of sustained attention.

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