Testing joint attention, imitation, and play as infancy precursors to language and theory of mind

By T. Charman, Simon Baron-Cohen, J. Swettenham, G. Baird, A. Cox, Auriol Drew. 2000

605 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Various theoretical accounts propose that an important developmental relation exists between joint attention, play, and imitation abilities, and later theory of mind ability. However, very little direct empirical evidence supports these claims for putative “precursor” theory of mind status. A small sample ( N =13) of infants, for whom measures of play, joint attention, and imitation had been collected at 20 months of age, was followed-up longitudinally at 44 months and a battery of theory of mind measures was conducted. Language and IQ were measured at both timepoints. Imitation ability at 20 months was longitudinally associated with expressive, but not receptive, language ability at 44 months. In contrast, only the joint attention behaviours of gaze switches between an adult and an active toy and looking to an adult during an ambiguous goal detection task at 20 months were longitudinally associated with theory of mind ability at 44 months. It is argued that joint attention, play, and imitation, and language and theory of mind, might form part of a shared social–communicative representational system in infancy that becomes increasingly specialised and differentiated as development progresses.

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/899ed8c553e00057d40c3c22cadabcff8e66fdc2

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In Developmental and Educational Psychology

1. Ailidh B. Carpendale
2. E. Carr
3. T. Charman
4. J. Carpendale
5. L. Roggman

In Social Psychology

1. Ailidh B. Carpendale
2. E. Carr
3. T. Charman
4. J. Carpendale
5. L. Roggman

Citations in the corpus

• The Development of Pointing: From Personal Directedness to Interpersonal Direction (2010, background): “For example, longitudinal studies show that infants’ skills in sharing attention with others are correlated with their later social competence [Charman et al., 2000; Vaughan Van Hecke et al., 2007] and with cognitive and language development [Baldwin, 1995; Brooks & Meltzoff, 2008; Carpenter, Nagell”
• Individual differences and the development of joint attention in infancy. (2007, result): “…information about social-cognitive processes because at least two studies have empirically linked differences on infant/toddler measures comparable to the ESCS IJA – EC measure with performance of preschool children on false belief or theory-of-mind paradigms (Charman et al., 2001; Clifford, 2006).”
• Gaze Cueing of Attention (2007, background): “However, as with normal participants, better joint attention skills are associated with larger vocabularies, and fewer social and communicative difficulties, in people with autism, illustrating the vital importance of joint attention in the social development of children with autism as well as…”
• Why is joint attention a pivotal skill in autism? (2003, background): “Some empirical evidence from typically developing children supports this claim (see Charman et al. 2000).”
• Joint Attention in Children With Autism (2004, positive): “Charman et al. (2001) found a relationship between early joint attention and later developing theory of mind in typically developing children.”
• Child, Caregiver, and Temperament Contributions to Infant Joint Attention (2003, result): “The observations of stability in this type of social attention coordination skill in a typical sample emphasize the importance of this aspect of early development, as does research that links measures of IJA with later intellectual development (Ulvund & Smith, 1996), language development (Mundy & Go”
• Peer relations in childhood. (2004, neutral): “later (Charman et al., 2001).”
• Playing with Daddy: Social Toy Play, Early Head Start, and Developmental Outcomes (2004, background): “Playing together with toys, as seen in studies of mother-infant play, typically requires sharing those toys, and sharing a focus on the same object provides a valuable context for early language and social development (Charman et al., 2001; Goldfield, 1987; Jacobson, 1981; Laasko, Poikkeus, Eklund, ”
• Exploring the use of a mobile robot as an imitation agent with children with low-functioning autism (2008, methodology): “The time interval for each action in an imitative play pattern was readjusted from 20 seconds (based on [42]) to 12 seconds, after observing that children showed disinterest after this length of time.”