Child's Language Development and Joint Attention (Research Paper Example)

Studies of joint attention between an infant and their caregiver revealed that greater joint attention yields greater language development in the child. A camera was used to record the actions of the caregivers and the infants (Yu & Smith, 2012; Yu et al., 2019). The infant/toddler would engage with their caretaker in a room with their caretaker talking to the child about the object the child chose to hold. The interaction between the parent and the infant is called joint attention. This study was utilized to understand if the gaze of both participants mattered when joint attention was happening (Yu & Smith, 2012). Both the infant and the caretaker wore cameras, which were used to observe the interaction between the two. A few years later, Yu and Smith (2012) teamed up with Suanda (2019) and modified their study. The cameras were still used to track the eye movement of both the infant and the caretaker, but this time they wanted to see if the time at which the caretaker said the name mattered when learning words (Yu et al., 2019). Having several objects laid out in front of them, a child chose to pick up one of them and the caretaker would begin naming and talking about that referent - the physical object (e.g. ball, train, car, etc.). The cameras were used to track the time at which the parent chose to say the word of the object. When a child sees and holds an object, and their caretaker tells them what it is called in that same moment, that child will develop a greater understanding of objects and their names because they are hearing and seeing simultaneously. This social interconnection leads to a greater understanding of word meaning, creating a stronger foundation for vocabulary development later in the child’s life. 

In contrast, the Mundy and Gomes (1998) article considered whether a child’s individual differences affected the skill of joint attention. These individual skills include a child’s gender, the mother’s education level, as well as the household income to which the child was living in (Muny & Gomes, 1998). This study had groups of infants, who were just over a year old, go through a series of tests at an initial point in time and then again at a follow up visit about sixteen weeks later. Each of these tests examined the stability of joint attention as well as other nonverbal communication measures (e.g. showing, pointing). Unlike the other two articles, Mundy and Gomes (1998) had a follow up required. The follow up was used to see if there were differences in receptive and expressive language that would contribute to a child’s individual difference. It was gathered that the skills listed above (child’s gender, mother’s education level, household income) were not significantly associated with the language or nonverbal communication, but the receptive and expressive language was higher in the follow up than they were at the baseline visit. This shows that the communication occurring between the tester and the child, also known as joint attention, increased at a later date allowing for the importance of joint attention to be decided. By the tester showing that individual factors had little to no impact on the child’s language development, it can be deduced that children learn language in a relatively similar manner. That manner being a caretaker/another individual must be present and must conduct the social aspect of joint attention, with physical objects, in order for an extensive vocabulary growth to be witnessed further on in a child’s life. 

Unlike the Mundy and Gomes (2019) article, both Yu and Smith (2012) and Yu et al.(2019) looked into the importance of why a social partner needs to name objects when a child holds the referent. When the child held the object close to their face, their caretaker would name the referent they were holding right away (Yu & Smith, 2012). When the caretaker named the referent for the child, it was concluded that the gazes of both participants were focused on that referent allowing for the child to both physically see and also hear the association between object and name. This enhanced the infant’s recognition of the object because it was the only thing in their vision, thus the word said by the caretaker was mapped to the referent. Likewise, it was found that joint attention may predict word learning because that social connection supports a child’s attention to the named referent (Yu et al., 2019). These two articles, Yu and Smith (2012) and Yu et al. (2019), support that the social context of joint attention (e.g. between caregiver and infant) must include direct contact with objects while simultaneously hearing names in order for a more in depth meaning of vocabulary to accumulate later on in a child’s life.