Beginning on Joint Attention

So I've been working on a project that will involve a re-examination of the development of Joint Attention. Joint Attention, as its name implies, is simply a compilation of tasks and skills that encompass the ability for the infant to 'jointly attend' to things with another person. These types of skills can include following another person's gaze, following a point, early language, etc.. The development Joint Attention is tricky because it is such a crucial skill present in nearly all healthy humans, that is, it is necessary for existing in a social environment. To be able to jointly attend is to be able to follow into someone else's focus of attention, at an object, at a person, etc.. With the onset of this skill, the infant is then able to start directing the attention of others, soon to be followed by early language, to be followed by full-blown language.

To be honest, I have found researching this phenomenon difficult, not only because the literature is robust, but because the conclusions on the topic are fickle. It's a great thing really, to be researching a topic where the answer is so far from being acquired, but at the same time it is frustrating having to compare the interpretations of results from remarkably similar studies whose conclusions are almost entirely different. Since joint attention is such a broad topic with nearly innumerable complications, to arrive at a single developmental explanation has been, up to this point, not possible.

At the same time, the work has also been very exhilarating. Here's the thing, I'm starting to realize what Dr. Campos was referring to when he said that what we needed to do was not necessarily a literature search, but a proposition for a new development theory; there really is no good theory yet. The literature is divided, and the task that Dr. Campos wants to solve is at least suggesting a theory that they can work with for their own studies (the next large study that this lab is doing involves a Joint attention task, for which they want a theoretical interpretation for).

The work has been interesting, not quite what I expected, but, it never is.

I'll write about some of the interesting quarrels within joint attention that make its development so debated soon.