A longitudinal study of maternal interactional styles and infant visual attention

Sixty-five mother-infant dyads (infants at ages 6 and 8 months) participated in a longitudinal study of interactional and attentional relationships. interaction was coded as attention following (AF), attention switching (AS), or joint attention. A laboratory-based assessment of infant fixation duration was used. AF and AS were unrelated at 6 months but inversely related at 8 months. Surprisingly, AF and AS were unrelated to joint attention. All variables were stable, and, except for a few correlations at 6 months, fixation duration was unrelated to interaction variables. These findings suggest that joint attention does not typically occur with infants younger than 9 months, but mothers may begin a pattern of interaction, AF or AS, with the you ng infant before joint attention emerges.