Early Social Skills in Infants Lecture

Lecture 2: Early Social Skills and Language/Communication Development

• PSYC21021: Topics and Issues in Developmental Psychology
• Dr. Alissa Ferry

Lecture 2 Aims

• Outline pre-linguistic communication skills
• Understand primary and secondary intersubjectivity
• Provide evidence of how these skills develop in infancy
• Evaluate the importance of these skills in relation to language acquisition

Lecture 2 Outline

• Two main stages of early social skills: primary and secondary intersubjectivity
• Two key modes of communication important for language acquisition: turn-taking and joint attention

Early Socialisation (1)

• Pre-linguistic communication is more than just crying

Early Socialisation (2)

• Primary Intersubjectivity (Trevarthen, 1979):
  • First months: Infants focus on faces, eye contact, and imitate sounds and gestures.
  • Interactions are one-to-one (dyadic), caregiver-baby.
• Secondary Intersubjectivity (Trevarthen, 1979):
  • Older infants: More sophisticated, exhibiting pointing, turn-taking, and shared attention.
  • Interactions are triadic, including an object (or another person), with interactions becoming intentional.

Early Socialisation Example (1 and 2)

• Video examples provided

Early Socialisation: Primary Intersubjectivity

• First months: attention to faces, eye contact, vocalizations, imitations of sounds and facial gestures.
• Interactions dyadic: baby-caregiver.
• No assumption of other's perspective.
• Not intentional.

Motivation – dyadic mimicry

• Infants imitate (Kuhl & Meltzoff, 1996; Meltzoff & Moore, 1977).
• Newborns mimic facial expressions.
• 3-4 month-olds imitate sounds.
• Limited form of imitation, without understanding others intentions.
• Shows infants motivated to engage with others.

Preference for Faces

• From birth, infants prefer to look at face-like things (Goren et al., 1975).

Early Socialisation: Attention to faces and eye gaze

• Newborns prefer to look at direct gaze.

Early Socialisation: Attention to faces and eye gaze

• Infants only follow gaze if preceded by mutual eye gaze
• Communicative signal (eye gaze/IDS) encourages infants attend to the same object.

Early Socialisation: Secondary Intersubjectivity

• Older infants (around 9 months):
  • More sophisticated: pointing, turn-taking, joint attention
  • Interactions are triadic: baby-caregiver-object.
  • Social referencing.
  • Infants will assume the perspective of others.

Secondary Intersubjectivity (2)

• Coordinate emotional response with another.
• Still face experiment (Adamson & Frick, 2003).
  • Parent "freezes", stops responding, interaction breaks down.
• Attempts to repair the interaction with social engagement cues.

Secondary Intersubjectivity (3 and 4)

• Social referencing (Sorce et al, 1985).
• Visual cliff demonstration (depth perception)
• Infants respond emotionally (to the parent) about an object perceived at a distance.
• Shared attention (situation, information transfer).

Secondary Intersubjectivity (5)

• Beginnings of intentional communication.
• Use eye contact/pointing to direct attention.
• Use of vocalization to indicate specific goals
• Demonstrates awaiting a response and persistence if not understood.

Lecture 2 Outline (second time)

• Two main stages of early social skills (primary and secondary intersubjectivity)
• Two key modes of communication important for language acquisition (turn-taking and joint attention)

Modes of Communication

• Turn-taking
• Joint attention
• Sharing a focus of attention
• Following attention
• Directing attention

Turn-Taking (1)

• Young infants (3 months) alternate vocalizations with caregivers (Stern et al. 1975).
• By 12 months, very few overlaps between speakers (Schaffer et al. 1977).
• Proto-conversations (Bruner, 1975) – similarities between turn-taking in early vocalizations and later conversation.

Turn-Taking: Protoconversations Video

• Video of infants demonstrated

Do infants really have sophisticated turn-taking skills?

• Interruptions suggest not until 3rd year (Rutter & Durkin, 1987)
• Early stages caregiver supports smooth interaction.
• Difficult to establish exactly when mutually intentional.

Joint Attention (1)

• Initial interactions: child-adult/or child-object.

Joint Attention (2)

• Joint attention: triadic (involving child, adult, and object/event) interaction. Shared awareness of the shared attention.

Joint Attention: Supplementary Video

• Video of joint attention demonstrated

Joint Attention (3)

• Joint attention: triadic interaction involving child, adult and object/event.
• Sharing attention
• Following attention
• Directing attention

Joint Attention: Sharing Attention (1)

• Social referencing (Sorce et al., 1985).
• Visual Cliff
• By 9 months, children look to adult in unfamiliar/threatening situations to gauge emotional response.

Joint Attention: Sharing Attention (2)

• At 9 months, child and adult interact over an object (Carpenter et al., 1997).
• Caregivers talk about the object of joint attention (West & Iverson 2017)

Joint Attention: Sharing Attention (3,4,5,6)

• Demonstrates video/verbal examples of joint attention.
• Joint attention skills predict later language skills (Tomasello & Farrar, 1986).
• Children better learn names for objects when they are attending to the object when it is named (Pereira, Smith & Yu, 2014)
• Routines (Bruner, 1983)
• Much of early language is learned in routines
• Caregivers structure routines around child
• Routines create a shared context
• Highly repetitive routines
• Routines differ in types of words used (Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2018)

Joint Attention: Sharing Attention (6)

• Mothers constantly monitor child's line of regard during 1st year
• Mothers attempt to regain child's attention if it shifts from desired object
• Mother solely responsible for establishing shared topic and relevant language
• Mothers' sensitivity to child's focus of attention related to child's vocabulary development
• Twins show language delay (linked to amount of time spent in joint attention episodes with mother (Tomasello et al., 1986)

Getting into joint attention

• Following Attention
• Following points, eye gaze
• Direction Attention
• Imperative, declarative pointing

Joint attention: Following points

• 9 months: infants can follow point in front of another person
• 12 months: infants check back with pointer
• 14 months: infants follow point across a line of sight

Joint attention: Following gaze following (1,2,3,4,5,6,7)

• Gaze following
• Infants turn to follow adult's gaze and share object of attention with another
• Why? Infants understand that person's gaze is directed to something interesting
• Infants don't track the gaze specifically till 18 month olds
• 12-month-olds follow head turns, even if the person is blindfolded
• 14-month-olds will only follow when eyes are visible;
• Infants follow gaze behind barriers.
• Motives for infant gaze following are tricky to determine
• Conflicting evidence about when children follow due to understanding that looker sees interesting things (18 months, but some evidence in infants as young as 12 months)

Understanding communicative intentions (1 and 2)

• Can children understand that adults intend to communicate information to them?
• 14, 18, and 24 month olds follow helper's point, understand shared goal (finding toy).
• Infants follow both point and gaze direction to retrieve objects.

Understanding communicative intentions (3)

• Infants do not follow non-communicative points and gaze directions.

Joint attention: Directing attention (1)

• Pointing
  • Imperative - To get adult to do something
  • Declarative - To direct adult attention to something
  • By 9 months, child points to an object - By 18 months, checks mother's regard before pointing to an object.

Joint attention: Directing attention, Criticisms

• Imperative pointing: infant learns that if she points she gets what she wants (Camaioni 1993)
• Declarative pointing: infant learns that getting more attention by pointing at things (Moore & D'Entremont. 2001).
• BUT 12-month-olds indicate when adult finds the wrong object.
• Respond negatively when attention is directed to the infant, but not the object.

Conclusions

• Two main stages of social development: primary intersubjectivity and secondary intersubjectivity
• Key communication skills: turn-taking, and joint attention
• Development of social skills and understanding of communicative intent.

Critical Evaluations

• Some evidence that infant understands others can have thoughts/intentions.
• Lower-level explanations (following movements, liking attention) are needed.
• Difficult to evaluate claims about infants have thoughts/intentions.
• Necessary precursors for language acquisition.
• Artificial intelligence
• Social skills/language development
• Word meaning, syntax

This quiz explores key concepts related to early social skills in infants, including primary and secondary intersubjectivity, the development of communication, and the importance of social referencing. Test your understanding of the critical milestones in social skills acquisition among infants.