Premium
Training Basic Visual Attention Leads to Changes in Responsiveness to Social‐Communicative Cues in 9‐Month‐Olds
Author(s) -
Forssman Linda,
Wass Sam V.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/cdev.12812
Subject(s) - psychology , gaze , task (project management) , social cognition , transfer of training , developmental psychology , cognition , social cognitive theory , social cue , control (management) , cognitive psychology , joint attention , autism , management , neuroscience , psychoanalysis , economics
This study investigated transfer effects of gaze‐interactive attention training to more complex social and cognitive skills in infancy. Seventy 9‐month‐olds were assigned to a training group ( n = 35) or an active control group ( n = 35). Before, after, and at 6‐week follow‐up both groups completed an assessment battery assessing transfer to nontrained aspects of attention control, including table top tasks assessing social attention in seminaturalistic contexts. Transfer effects were found on nontrained screen‐based tasks but importantly also on a structured observation task assessing the infants’ likelihood to respond to an adult's social‐communication cues. The results causally link basic attention skills and more complex social‐communicative skills and provide a principle for studying causal mechanisms of early development.