Joint attention (JA) evolves around 9 months of age in typical development and allows infants to actively participate in triadic situations and to monitor others’ behaviour. However, this naturally evolving process can be influenced by various maternal and infant factors. In this study, we were interested in which explanatory mechanisms for the development of joint attention are the most significant.
The observational and questionnaire-based data collection of the third wave of Cohort ’18 Growing Up in Hungary was conducted with one-year-old children and their mothers. With the participation of 247 infants (M_week = 54.5; SD_week = 1.16; 136 boys, 111 girls) we assessed children's temperament, sustained attention, socio-emotional competencies and joint attention skills, as well as the quality of mother-child relationship.
General Linear Model was applied to find the best fitting model among our variables (F[5,200] = 5.56, p<0.001, R² = 0.10). The results suggest that more intense sustained attention and lower levels of socio-emotional difficulties predicted better JA skills in one-year-old children (respectively, β = 0.15, p = 0.027; β = -0.15, p = 0.032), while positive affectivity/surgency had a negative effect on JA performance (β = -0.17, p = 0.015). It was also observed that children at higher risk of socio-emotional difficulties had weaker ability of JA when maternal attachment quality was low (β = 0.18, p = 0.011).
Our results underline that although JA skills are assumed to be naturally emerging, infants with higher activity or vulnerable socio-emotional competencies might possess weaker JA skills.