Moving developmental social neuroscience toward a second-person approach

Author(s)
Stefanie Höhl, Gabriela Markova
Abstract

Infants' cognitive development and learning rely profoundly on their interactions with other people. In the first year, infants become increasingly sensitive to others' gaze and use it to focus their own attention on relevant visual input. However, infants are not passive observers in early social interactions, and these exchanges are characterized by high levels of contingency and reciprocity. Wass and colleagues offer first insights into the neurobehavioral dynamics of caregiver-infant interactions, demonstrating that caregivers' scalp-recorded theta band activity responds to their infant's changes in attention, and parental brain activation is associated with infants' sustenance of attention. This research opens up entirely new ways of exploring caregiver-infant interactions and to understand early social attention as a reciprocal and dynamic process.

Organisation(s)
Department of Clinical and Health Psychology
Journal
PLoS Biology
Volume
16
No. of pages
7
ISSN
1545-7885
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000055
Publication date
12-2018
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
501005 Developmental psychology
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Agricultural and Biological Sciences(all), Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology(all), Immunology and Microbiology(all), Neuroscience(all)
Portal url
https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/moving-developmental-social-neuroscience-toward-a-secondperson-approach(be534d6e-eeb5-4f9b-ba68-c3f35256efe5).html