The next topic in the Strategy Spotlight is Joint Attention. First I will present Joint Attention in the context of Auditory Verbal Practice and then describe how Joint Attention is equally important in other contexts and how it can be attained. But first, what is Joint Attention anyway?

Joint Attention occurs when an adult follows the eye gaze of an infant or child and comments on whatever the child watches. Joint attention can also occur when an adult attempts to gain an infant or child’s attention to an object or activity (initiation of joint attention).

Joint attention is a fundamental cognitive process for children to engage with their world. It requires processing information about perception, memory, categorization, and language. The language input given while in a state of joint attention increases the impact of the language exposure.

So when does joint attention start developing? Brooks & Melzoff (2005) found evidence that there is a window where Joint Attention begins to develop. They found that at 9 months of age infants responded to adult head turns toward a target as often as they turned to an adult’s eye gaze. However, at 10-11 months of age, infants started to look at the adult’s target specifically when the adult turned with open eyes. When the adult turned with closed eyes, the 10 and 11 month olds did not follow their head turn. At 10 and 11 months of age a change had happened where these infants were closely monitoring the adult’s perceptual gaze. This gaze following develops from visual contact between the looker and the object which is an important step in social cognition.

Because joint attention is a step in social cognition, it is also necessary for early word learning. When we share attention with our child, then we label or refer to something, we are able to manage and direct each other through linguistic means.

I would love to consider Akhtar & Gernsbacher (2007) and their research on how joint attention varies across cultures. As professionals serving a wide variety of families from diverse backgrounds, the duty is on us to be well informed about cultural practices of the families we work with. Coaching parents to be their child’s first and best teacher requires us to coach from the family’s cultural perspective. What Akhtar & Gernsbacher found was that joint attention and how it develops differs across contexts. For example, in Guatemalan Mayan toddlers and their mothers were more likely to maintain simultaneous attention to multiple events and objects. In contrast, middle-class American toddlers were more likely to pay attention to one thing at a time, alternating attention between two people or objects of interest. Both toddlers were developing joint attention, but in different ways. The difference in these contexts are connected to the mothers’ beliefs about how children learn. Mayan children are thought of as keen observers and able to coordination attention to multiple participants. American parents tend to believe that their children are not attending to a task if they are not exclusively focused on that task alone. When e are working with families from cultures different from our own, it is important to know about how they view children’s learning.

Much of the research on joint attention, such as Brooks & Melzoff mentioned above, looks at one infant and one adult interacting. However, more and more children are participating in group child care and most children do not spend most of their waking hours in 1:1 interactions. There are many contexts in which young children are in positions of joint attention with each other, rather than an adult.

Now let’s talk about children who are deaf and hard of hearing and the importance of joint attention as a language building strategy. Cole and Flexer (2012) emphasized that communication is most successful when people share a common focus or topic of discussion. For children who are deaf and hard of hearing who are learning to listen and speak, when we share visual focus with them, the child is in a position of “auditory only” joint attention where we can build both auditory and language skills at the same time.

The above image shows a child seated at the table next the a caregiver with the attention on the play-doh on the table. The child is able to hear and act on the direction from the caregiver because of their positioning. The language has a rich context because they have joint attention to the object in front of them. In this setting, the family is working on these skills:

attention to auditory input
building social cognition (Mundy & Newell, 2007)
development of theory of mind (Gavrilov et al., 2012)
increasing language development (Brooks & Meltzoff, 2005)

For those families and professions who are not using Auditory Verbal approach, this strategy is still of great importance. Leiberman, Hatrak, and Mayberry (2014) found that deaf children with deaf parents who use sign language have clear advantages over deaf children with hearing parents (who are using sign language) with regard to development of visual attention. Deaf parents are experienced with the linguistic conventions of sign language that include signing on the object or on the child’s body or changing the visual field in which signs are used. In contrast, hearing parents learning to use sign language struggle to attract and maintain their deaf child’s attention long enough to provide meaningful linguistic, and as a result tend to be less successful at creating episodes of symbol-infused joint attention (Gale & Schick, 2009; Prezbindowski, Adamson, & Lederberg, 1998).

For further reading, you can download an individual PDF of this strategy by filling out the form below or you can download the entire Auditory Verbal Strategies eBook by visiting the link in the navigation bar at the top of this page.