Triadic joint attention (JA) refers to the shared focus of a child and an interlocutor on an object or event, accompanied by mutual awareness of this shared attention. Although JA is associated with early social interaction and later language development, its definitions and behavioral markers vary across studies and are often restricted to gaze and vocalizations, overlooking other communicative modalities. This longitudinal study followed 14 Swedish child-parent dyads during free play from 9 months to 3 years of age. Interactions were analyzed at both group and dyad levels. Vocal/verbal behavior, gesture, gaze, touch, and facial expression were annotated in detail. Time spent in JA was calculated across ages, and sequential analyses using odds ratios were conducted to examine how specific behaviors predicted the onset of JA. Joint attention increased steadily with age, accounting for 76% of interaction time at the group level by 3 years. Substantial variability was observed between dyads. Across ages, gaze combined with object-directed action, neutral affect, and close physical proximity were the strongest predictors of JA, although their relative contributions varied across dyads. These findings highlight the importance of multimodal analyses and attention to individual variability for understanding the developmental role of joint attention. The methodological approach, time-window sequential analysis, proved effective in identifying both group-level patterns and the diversity between and within dyads’ interactional styles. Moreover, analyses based on age measured in days indicated that age differences – even up to more than one month – played a minor role relative to this variability in dyadic interactional styles.

Cascading effects is when development or achievements in one area influences achievements in other areas, not always easily recognizable as linked. Gross and fine motor skills have been related to language acquisition by assuming cascading effects (Thelen, 2002; Thelen & Smith, 1994; Iverson, 2022). However, the results are inconclusive (Adolf & Franchak, 2017; Andalò et al., 2022; Moore et al., 2019; Libertus & Viloi, 2016; Butterworth & Morris, 1996). 

One potential reason behind these results could be that “motor skills” is too static a measure, even if divided into gross (like walking, crawling, jumping, etc.) and fine motor skills (such as tweezer grip, hand-eye coordination, etc.). As motor-language relationships have been found when interactional aspects are taken into account (Karasik et al., 2014), motor behavior performed in interaction might be a more dynamic measure. It would also be a measure of children’s tendency to use their motor abilities.

Touch and gesture are different kinds of movements but differ from gross and fine motor skills by both being – by definition – closely intertwined in dyadic interaction. Touch is, together with gaze, the first communicative modality in use in infant-parent interaction. The “meaning” conveyed by touch is foremost of an emotional nature, spanning from negative to positive. Touch has few known associations to First Language Acquisition, although some studies indicate that specific kinds of touch could be related to word learning (Seidl et al.2015). 

Gesture has been regarded as a gateway to the first word production (Butterworth & Morris, 1996; Choi et al., 2021; Colonnesi et al., 2010). Gesture is further a symbolic form of movement as they carry conventional meaning. They also depend on motoric abilities, which is one reason why fine-tuned gestures like iconic or deictic are not typically seen until the end of a child’s first year or the beginning of the second year. 

In between emotional touch and symbolic gesture we have all kinds of movements, such as touching with an object, driving a toy car on the floor, acting on objects, etc. The handling of tools extends the child’s manual abilities (Adolph & Robinson, 2015; Smitsman & Bongers, 2003; Lockman & Kahrs, 2014). It has also been shown that tool use in adults strengthens the linguistic performance with complex syntactic structures (Thibault et al., 2021). In a study comparing high-risk infants with and without later ASD, infants who later received a diagnosis showed lower frequency of grasp types at 24 m o a, and less functional actions at 10 m o a, than the high-risk no-delay group (Sparaci et al., 2019).

Within developmental literature – and as indicated above – a child’s activity level, curiosity, and own initiative to interaction has been highlighted as important for future development not only in the motoric area but also in relation to language (Adolf & Franchak, 2016; Andalò et al., 2022). Tamis-LeMonda and colleagues (2001) could, on the other hand, show that parental responses to child utterances and gestures were more influential than child activity for when a child reached specific milestones (such as first 50 words, combinatorial speech, past tense, etc.). Parental speaking time has in recent big data-studies also been related to vocabulary size in children (Bergelson et al., 2023). 

In the present study we investigate if children with different language skills at 4 y o a, have different frequencies of motoric behavior (measured through gesture and touch behaviour) during their first year of life. In addition, we compare the parents of the two groups in regard to amount of verbalizations/vocalizations during the first year. We further address if the child’s touch and gesture behavior at 12 m o a predict their language level at 4 y o a. 

Data consists of 22 parent-child dyads recorded at 6, 9 and 12 m o a. Child gestures (deictic, emblem, show/offer, iconic, action, handle-object), child touch (comfort, stimulate, action), parental speaking time, and context (play object, play peekaboo, play singing, play book, play non-toy, other) was annotated and related to CDI measures at 48 m o a. The children are part of the MINT-data set (N=65) and were selected based on SCDI-measures at 4 years of age: 11 with high scores and 11 with low scores. Based on the developmental literature on motor development, the hypothesis is that children who early on are motorically active and prone to interaction with the parent through touch and gesture will also have an advantage language wise. 

To explore the two groups with high/low CDI, mixed effects model has been used to test for differences in various gesture and touch characteristics over time. For multiple comparisons Bonferroni adjustment was used. To identify factors that predict the odds of having high (or low) score on SCDI at 4 years of age, logistic regression was used.

The results show that there is a difference between the high and low SCDI-groups during the first year in their use of deictic and show/offer gestures. No other behavior significantly differentiated the groups. For both groups, emblem use and activity level (handle object + action object) increased during the first year. Amount of parental vocalization/verbalization, on the other hand, decreased for both groups and was significantly lower at 12 m o a, compared to at 6 and 9 m o a.  

Investigating the predictive power of early activity, 56 children at 12 m o a were included in the linear regression, including the group of high and low SCDI children. The results showed that Deictic gesture and Handle object, and amount of Parental vocalization significantly predict the children’s scores on SCDI at 4 y o a. Further, the child’s comfort touch was a negative predictor of SCDI at 4 y o a.

The findings are discussed in relation to prior studies of cascading effects – action, mobility, and language – and argue that interactional aspects – such as a child engaging in motoric interaction rather than motoric action seems to be a more promising venture for future research.

Joint Attention (JA) between children and their parents, are often related to the child’s later language skills (e.g., Carpenter et al., 1998). However, the definitions of JA, and the way it has been operationalized, differ between studies. Studies on similar cohorts and methodologies often end up with different results (Gabouer & Bortfeld, 2021; Astor & Gredbäck, 2022). It has been suggested that JA is a Western phenomenon rather than a universal prerequisite for language acquisition (Akhtar & Gernsbacher, 2007). The present study followed 14 Swedish child-parent dyads, longitudinally between 0;9 and 3;0 years of age, including the dyads' interactional use of vocal, gestural, gaze, touch, and facial expressions. The research questions address: i) which behaviors are involved in JA; ii) which behaviors predict JA, and iii) if JA can be detected through data-driven methods. We further investigate the relationship between multimodal variables and later language skills. The results indicate that some behaviors are more frequent in JA-sequences than outside of these; and, that parental behaviors predict JA during the period 9-15 months of age. We find a data-driven factor that summarizes behaviors that are related to JA; however, this factor seems to capture dyadic shared attention rather than triadic JA. The factor is predictive of two of the language measures (SCDI and PPVT), whereas JA predicts only one of these (SCDI). Furthermore, specific behaviors such as Child-gaze-at-object, carries the same - or higher - explanatory power for later language skills than does JA. The results are discussed in relation to previous findings and future goals.

References:

Akhtar, N., & Gernsbacher, M. A. (2007). Joint attention and vocabulary development: a critical look. Lang. Linguist. Compass 1, 195–207.

Astor & Gredebäck (2022). Chapter Seven - Gaze following in infancy: Five big questions that the field should answer, (Lockman, J.J, ed). Advances in Child Development and Behavior, Vol 63, pp. 191-223, https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.acdb.2022.04.003.

Carpenter, M., Nagell, K, and Tomasello, M. (1998), Social Cognition, Joint Attention, and Communicative Competence from 9 to 15 Months of Age, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 63.

Gabouer A, & Bortfeld H. (2021). Revisiting how we operationalize joint attention. Infant Behav Dev. May;63:101566.

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Language skills and executive functions (EF) undergo rapid development during preschool years and are foundational for a wide range of life outcomes but little is known of the connections between language and EF in Swedish, typically developing children. The current pilot study included 47 mono- and multilingual children aged 4–6 and aimed at describing the relationship between language and EF and investigating potential associations to age, sex, bi-/multilingualism, socioeconomic status (SES), and aspects of preschool attendance. Measures of language and EF correlated with one another to a large extent, but also showed some differentiation, suggesting a specific link between morphosyntactic ability and inhibition. Age was a significant predictor of most but not all measures. No significant effects of sex were found, with the exception for a female advantage in nonverbal communicative behavior, assessed by a novel rating paradigm. SES did not predict language or EF, and bi- and/or multilingual children did not differ from monolingual Swedish children on language or EF measures. Findings are discussed in relation to the connection between language and EF as well as to the needs of development of reliable language, EF, and communication measures for use in the Swedish context.

Background

During the preschool years, children’s development of skills like language and communication, executive functions, and socioemotional comprehension undergo dramatic development. Still, our knowledge of how these skills are enhanced is limited. The preschool contexts constitute a well-suited arena for investigating these skills and hold the potential for giving children an equal opportunity preparing for the school years to come. The present study compared two pedagogical methods in the Swedish preschool context as to their effect on language and communication, executive functions, socioemotional comprehension, and early math. The study targeted children in the age span four-to-six-year-old, with an additional focus on these children’s backgrounds in terms of socioeconomic status, age, gender, number of languages, time spent at preschool, and preschool start. An additional goal of the study was to add to prior research by aiming at disentangling the relationship between the investigated variables.

Method

The study constitutes a randomized controlled trial including 18 preschools and 29 preschool units, with a total of 431 children, and 98 teachers. The interventions lasted for 6 weeks, preceded by pre-testing and followed by post-testing of the children. Randomization was conducted on the level of preschool unit, to either of the two interventions or to control. The interventions consisted of a socioemotional and material learning paradigm (SEMLA) and a digitally implemented attention and math training paradigm (DIL). The preschools were further evaluated with ECERS-3. The main analysis was a series of univariate mixed regression models, where the nested structure of individuals, preschool units and preschools were modeled using random variables.

Results

The result of the intervention shows that neither of the two intervention paradigms had measurable effects on the targeted skills. However, there were results as to the follow-up questions, such as executive functions predicting all other variables (language and communication, socioemotional comprehension, and math). Background variables were related to each other in patterns congruent with earlier findings, such as socioeconomic status predicting outcome measures across the board. The results are discussed in relation to intervention fidelity, length of intervention, preschool quality, and the impact of background variables on children’s developmental trajectories and life prospects.

Within the field of developmental science, there is a general agreement of the need to work together across academic disciplinary boundaries in order to advance the understandings of how to optimize child development and learning. However, experience also shows that such collaborations may be challenging. This paper reports on the experiences of bidirectional collaboration between researchers in a multidisciplinary research team and between researchers and stakeholders, in the first randomized controlled trial in Swedish preschool. The objective of the trial was to investigate the effects of two pedagogical learning strategies evaluating language, communication, attention, executive functions and early math. The interdisciplinary team includes researchers from early childhood education, linguistics, developmental psychology and cognitive neuro science. Educational researchers and theorists within the field of early childhood education in Sweden have during the last two decades mainly undertaken small-scale qualitative praxis-oriented and participative research. There is a widespread skepticism with regards to some of the core principles in controlled intervention methodologies, including a strong resistance towards individual testing of children. Consequently unanticipated disagreements and conflicts arose within the research team, as RCT methodology requires the measurement of effects pre and post the intervention. The aim of this article is to discuss the conditions for bidirectional collaboration both between researchers and stakeholders and between researchers in the research team. The findings illustrate strategies and negotiations that emerged in order to address ontological and epistemological controversies and disagreements. These include (a) the negotiation of research ethics, (b) making divergences visible and learning from each other, (c) using a multi-epistemological and methodological approach as a complement to the RCT design and (d) the negotiation of research problems that are shared between educators and researchers.

Background

During the preschool years, children develop abilities and skills in areas crucial for later success in life. These abilities include language, executive functions, attention, and socioemotional skills. The pedagogical methods used in preschools hold the potential to enhance these abilities, but our knowledge of which pedagogical practices aid which abilities, and for which children, is limited. The aim of this paper is to describe an intervention study designed to evaluate and compare two pedagogical methodologies in terms of their effect on the above-mentioned skills in Swedish preschool children.

Method

The study is a randomized control trial (RCT) where two pedagogical methodologies were tested to evaluate how they enhanced children’s language, executive functions and attention, socioemotional skills, and early maths skills during an intensive 6-week intervention. Eighteen preschools including 28 units and 432 children were enrolled in a municipality close to Stockholm, Sweden. The children were between 4;0 and 6;0 years old and each preschool unit was randomly assigned to either of the interventions or to the control group. Background information on all children was collected via questionnaires completed by parents and preschools. Pre- and post-intervention testing consisted of a test battery including tests on language, executive functions, selective auditive attention, socioemotional skills and early maths skills. The interventions consisted of 6 weeks of intensive practice of either a socioemotional and material learning paradigm (SEMLA), for which group-based activities and interactional structures were the main focus, or an individual, digitally implemented attention and math training paradigm, which also included a set of self-regulation practices (DIL). All preschools were evaluated with the ECERS-3.

Discussion

If this intervention study shows evidence of a difference between group-based learning paradigms and individual training of specific skills in terms of enhancing children’s abilities in fundamental areas like language, executive functions and attention, socioemotional skills and early math, this will have big impact on the preschool agenda in the future. The potential for different pedagogical methodologies to have different impacts on children of different ages and with different backgrounds invites a wider discussion within the field of how to develop a preschool curriculum suited for all children.