Joint attention

In Papuan languages like Wambon and Urim demonstrative forms are used both in contexts of referent identification, e.g. as demonstrative operators in noun phrases, and in topicality contexts, e.g. as topic markers with adverbial clauses and phrases, recapitulative clauses, new topic NPs and given topic NPs. Using notions from the Functional Grammar framework (Dik, 1989), I present a non-unified account of the demonstrative forms: helping the addressee to identify referents by giving deictic hints like 'close to speaker' and orienting the addressee about the topical cohesion of the discourse are two separate functional domains in language. This 'two-domain' hypothesis, which views the demonstrative forms as having two synchronically unrelated functions, explains the fact that in Wambon and Urim the demonstratives show important differences in form and behaviour depending on whether they are used for referent identification or for expressing topicality distinctions. The 'two-domain' hypothesis explains such formal differences but cannot explain the formal similarities between topic markers and demonstrative operators in Papuan languages like Wambon and Urim. To explain these formal similarities I suggest a diachronic development: in several Papuan languages topic markers developed from demonstrative operators. In the relatively well-documented Awyu-family of Papuan languages this process can be traced: in Wambon, the resumptive demonstrative pronoun-eve integrated in the preceding NP as a topic marker in stative clauses with a very transparant dichotomous topic-comment structure. In Korowai, also of the Awyu-family, the clitic-efO, the cognate of Wambon-eve 'that', completely lost its function as a demonstrative operator and functions solely as a topic marker. ~ This paper is based on a lecture given during the Workshop on Pragmatics and Grammar, University of Hamburg, 11-12 December 1992. I should thank the participants in that workshop for their stimulating critical comments.

Joint attention has been suggested to contribute to children’s development of cooperation; however, few empirical studies have directly tested this hypothesis. Children aged 1 and 2 years participated in two joint action activities to assess their cooperation with an adult partner, who stopped participating at a specific moment during the tasks. Children’s joint attention skills were measured by the Early Social Communication Scales (ESCS). Results showed that children’s responding to joint attention ability contributed to their successful cooperation in an activity that required parallel roles, whereas initiating joint attention ability contributed to their successful cooperation in an activity that required complementary roles. These results suggest a complex relationship between joint attention and cooperative abilities when considering RJA and IJA separately.

In this paper, we analyze a simple adaptive model of competition called the "Minority Game" that is used in analyzing the competition phenomena in markets. The Minority Game consists of many simple autonomous agents, and self-organization occurs as a result of simple behavioral rules. Up to now, the dynamics of this game has been studied from various angles, but so far the focus has been on the macroscopic behavior of all the agents as a whole. We are interested in the mechanisms involved in collaborative behavior among multi-agents, so we focused our attention on the behavior of individual agents. In this paper, we suggest that core elements responsible for self-organization to occur are: 1. rules of the game that potentially include a mechanism for a form of self-organization, 2. rules that place a good constraint on each agent's behavior, and 3. the existence of some rule that lead to indirect interaction; a process called "stigmergy".

In this paper, we analyze a simple adaptive model of competition called the "Minority Game" that is used in analyzing the competition phenomena in markets. The Minority Game consists of many simple autonomous agents, and self-organization occurs as a result of simple behavioral rules. Up to now, the dynamics of this game has been studied from various angles, but so far the focus has been on the macroscopic behavior of all the agents as a whole. We are interested in the mechanisms involved in collaborative behavior among multi-agents, so we focused our attention on the behavior of individual agents. In this paper, we suggest that core elements responsible for self-organization to occur are: 1. rules of the game that potentially include a mechanism for a form of self-organization, 2. rules that place a good constraint on each agent's behavior, and 3. the existence of some rule that lead to indirect interaction; a process called "stigmergy".

Objective: This study examined the contributions of maternal bids for joint attention, relationship quality, and infant characteristics, to individual differences in infants' parallel and joint attention. Method: Fifty-two 10-month-olds and their mothers were assessed in order to investigate concurrent predictors of infant parallel attention, responding to joint attention, and initiating joint attention. Results: Parallel attention was predicted by infants' higher mental development, low expression of negative emotionality, and maternal entertaining behaviors. Responding to joint attention was marginally predicted by total maternal bids for joint attention. Initiating joint attention was predicted by the infants' low expression of negative emotionality, as well as marginally predicted by fewer maternal teaching behaviors. Conclusion: These results further the understanding of the factors influencing infant parallel as well as joint attention.

Joint attention capabilities were assessed in 52 10-month-olds observed independently with their mothers and fathers in a semi-structured toy-play condition. Mothers and fathers were indistinguishable in terms of total number of behaviors aimed at engaging their infant in joint attention. However, infants responded more to mothers' bids for attention than to fathers' bids. Contrastingly, infants tended to display more initiating joint attention behaviors while interacting with their fathers. Although parents did not differ in terms of sensitivity, fathers were less intrusive than mothers. Results are discussed in terms of the specificities of mother-infant and father-infant interaction and how the paternal role should be highlighted in the case of infant's joint attention development.

Reduced gaze following has been associated previously with lower language scores in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Here, we use eye-tracking in a controlled experimental setting to investigate whether gaze following and attention distribution during a word learning task associate with later developmental and clinical outcomes in a population of infants at familial risk for ASD. Fifteen-month-old infants (n = 124; n = 101 with familial risk) watched an actress repeatedly gaze toward and label one of two objects present in front of her. We show that infants who later developed ASD followed gaze as frequently as typically developing peers but spent less time engaged with either object. Moreover, more time spent on faces and less on objects was associated with lower concurrent or later verbal abilities, but not with later symptom severity. No outcome group showed evidence for word learning. Thus, atypical distribution of attention rather than poor gaze following is a limiting factor for language development in infants at familial risk for ASD.

Previous palaeo-neurological work suggested that the human precuneus evolved differently in Homo sapiens, compared to Neanderthals, and that this brain region may be important for both the extended visuospatial abilities and attention necessary for Pleistocene bowhunting. Here I use Kalahari ethnographies to provide insight into bowhunting as a complex techno-behaviour with many aspects interacting in nontrivial ways, requiring a range of attention types in succession or simultaneously. As an inter-disciplinary heuristic exercise, I use genes with non-synonymous changes at high frequency in H. sapiens compared to Neanderthals and Denisovans to explore previous suggestions about the evolution of the precuneus and its role in complex, bimanual techno-behaviours-requiring both hands doing different things at the same time whilst focussing attention across a distance-such as bowhunting. The preliminary results suggest that aspects of complex attentional control and unique genetic expressions in the H. sapiens genome may have been involved in the expansion of the human precuneus. This expansion, contributing to the globularisation of the human cranium, may have started by ~ 160 ka in Africa, reaching current human ranges by ~ 100 ka. Since then, we see a noticeable increase in the complexity of H. sapiens socio-technical systems, together with continued globularisation until ~ 35 ka. Especially our ability to focus on a task or stimuli for a long time whilst ignoring distractions (sustained and executive attention) and focussing on visual information in a spatiotemporal context (i.e., visuospatial attention) may have been strongly developed in human precuneal attention.

O presente estudo teve por objetivo desenvolver um instrumento simples de rastreamento da capacidade de imitar de criancas de 12 a 24 meses. Considerando que a aprendizagem se da por meio de processos onde o ser humano aprende a observar o outro e a partir dai passar a imita-lo, este processo tem papel importante nas habilidades socio-cognitivas, bem como no aprendizado linguistico e social da crianca. Portanto e desejavel que prejuizos nessa habilidade sejam detectados os mais precoces possiveis para que acoes de intervencao sejam iniciadas. Para tanto, nos basearemos em um instrumento de avaliacao de simples aplicacao que indica as habilidades de imitar de criancas pequenas, sob o comando de um adulto. A nossa amostra constituiu-se de 65 criancas de desenvolvimento tipico, com idade entre 12 e 24 meses de duas instituicoes particulares. Os nossos resultados mostraram que 62 criancas foram capazes de imitar os comandos em escalas variaveis, mas 3 criancas nao imitaram nenhum dos co...

The Thinking Head project has as it aims to develop (i) a new generation Talking Thinking Head that embodies human attributes, and improves human-machine interaction; and (ii) a plug-and-play research platform for users to test software in an interactive real-time environment. Here, project progress is discussed in terms of the four teams: 1. Head Building–(i) Plug-and-Play architecture,(ii) Thinking Media Framework, and (iii) Animation; 2. Human-Head Interaction (HHI)–(i) Wizard of Oz studies, and (ii) joint attention by human ...

Autism is a developmental condition marked by difficulties with social contact and speech, as well as confined, repetitive behavior. This disease manifests itself at birth or the first two and a half years of existence. While the afflicted children look entirely average, they indulge in puzzling and troubling activities that are noticeably different than those of regular children. Autism is becoming more prevalent globally. Due to the fact that parents are typically the main providers, their willingness to understand the signs and effects of autism and react accordingly is critical if we are to offer the best treatment possible to autistic persons. The aim of this research was to assess parents' knowledge and understanding of autism with the help of social media.

One of the main positions in the contemporary debate on joint attention is John Campbell's relationalist account. This account has been welcomed as extremely promising in some strands of philosophy and cognitive science, but it has recently been subject to renewed criticism. In this paper, I take a sympathetic approach toward Campbell's relationalism and I provide support for it by means of a naturalistic theory of the individuation of joint-attentional states. I start from examining some recent objections raised against Campbell's account. I suggest that, although these objections do not undermine the account, they point to questions that current relationalism leaves unanswered. Specifically, current relationalism does not provide an explanation of the psychological processes through which a jointattentional experience is individuated, i.e., assembled and experienced, in such a way that it can constitute an immediate justification for a coordinated action. I propose that such an explanation can be found in a phenomenologicalinteractionist approach to shared intentionality.

Language, social communication and behaviour 2 This paper addressed relations between language, social communication and behaviour, and their trajectories, in a sample of 9-11-year-olds (n=91) who had been referred to clinical services with concerns about language as pre-schoolers. Children were first assessed at 2½-4 years, and again 18 months later. Results revealed increasing differentiation of profiles across time. By 9-11 years, 11% of the sample had social communication deficits, 27% language impairment, 20% both, and 42% neither. The size of group differences on key language and social communication measures was striking (2-3 standard deviations). Social communication deficits included autistic mannerisms and were associated with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties (SEBDs); in contrast, language impairment was associated with hyperactivity only. Children with both language and social communication problems had the most severe difficulties on all measures. These distinct school-age profiles emerged gradually. Investigation of developmental trajectories revealed that the three impaired groups did not differ significantly on language or SEBD measures when the children were first seen. Only low performance on the Early Sociocognitive Battery, a new measure of social responsiveness, joint attention and symbolic understanding, differentiated the children with and without social communication problems at 9-11 years. These findings suggest that some children who first present with language delay or difficulties have undetected Autism Spectrum Disorders which may or may not be accompanied by language impairment in the longer term. This new evidence of developmental trajectories starting in the preschool years throws further light on the nature of social communication and language problems in school-age children, relations between language impairment and SEBDs, and on the nature of early language development.

In this chapter, I examine a particular social practice, namely, the practice of offering explanations of action. My interest in exploring this practice is that moral discourse presupposes not only the intelligibility of asking for and giving explanations of action, but also the capacity to inhabit a normative, social order that provides common standards for the rectitude of such explanations. In what follows, I focus on the capacity for collective intentionality, cognition of how we – as members of a social group – collectively relate to some particular, common object of attention.  This capacity enables young children to acquire the art of navigating a social world that routinely demands that they explain themselves. A key manifestation of this capacity is young children’s ability to forge and comprehend a shared, experiential background or social frame with interlocutors. By relating to particular objects of cognition within this shared frame, normative standards of evaluation and explanation of action become possible.

Este artigo sugere uma reflexão teórica acerca da importância do afeto materno inserido na linguagem do maternalês, para o desenvolvimento infantil; conforme os teóricos Elliot (1982), Bee (1996) e Ribeiro e Garcez (1988), a linguagem é o núcleo do sentido da ação recíproca que dá o significado da comunicação. Conforme Sim-Sim (1998), Hoff (2006) e Hudson (2006), através da manutenção da atenção do espaço de interação com a criança, agindo diretamente relacionado com o fenômeno observado no corpo da criança pequena, há uma progressiva interação da comunicação infantil que envolve pela situação materna de motivar a criança, cuja modificação do padrão da fala interage, numa construção do espaço de valorização dessa troca afetiva. Conforme Perroni (1992), Peterson (1994) e e Bates (1976) se estabelece na relação entre fala e afeto, que vai crescendo e formando uma teia externa de relacionamentos, iniciando-se por gestos e sinais. Conforme Ornstein, Haden & Hedrick (2001/2003) e Rigolet (2000), a comunicação baseada na linguagem mãe-criança (maternalês) provê mecanismos para que crianças pequenas adquiram habilidades de memória generalizadas.

Symbolic artifacts present a challenge to theories of neurocognitive processing due to their dual nature: they are both physical objects and vehicles of social meanings. While their physical properties can be read of the surface structure, the meaning of symbolic artifacts depends on their embeddedness in cultural practices. In this study, participants built models of LEGO bricks to illustrate their understanding of abstract concepts. Subsequently, they were scanned with fMRI while presented to photographs of their own and others’ models. When participants attended to the meaning of the models, we observed activations associated with social cognition and semantics. In contrast, when attending to the physical properties, we observed activations related to object recognition and manipulation. Furthermore, when contrasting own and others’ models, we found activations in areas associated with autobiographical memory and agency. Our findings support a view of symbolic artifacts as neuroc...

This article presents the valve as a foundational mechanism in the architecture of attention, modulating cross-field activity between the physical and mental domains of experience. The valve governs the selective passage of signals between sensory and cognitive fields, shaping the boundary of what becomes conscious. Its function is both automatic, reflecting adaptive patterns acquired through learning, context, and affective history, and volitional, enabling the agent to exert directed influence over the configuration of awareness. As a phenomenological site of interface between perception and thought, impression and expression, the valve constitutes the dynamic infrastructure through which relevance is forged, coherence is maintained, and agency is exercised. It offers a unified account of attentional control rooted in phenomenological structure and informed by cognitive theory, recasting the governance of attention as a principal medium through which selfhood and freedom are enacted.

ABSTRACTWhen two people talk about an object, they depend on joint attention, a prerequisite for setting up common ground in a conversational exchange. In this study, we analyze this process for parent and child, with data from 40 dyads, to show how adults initiate joint attention in talking to young children (mean ages 1 ; 6 and 3 ; 0). Adults first get their children's attention with a summons (e.g.Ready?,See this?), but cease using such forms once children give evidence of attending. Children signal their attention by looking at the target object, evidence used by the adults. Only at that point do adults begin to talk about the object. From then on, they use language and gesture to offer information about and maintain attention on the target. The techniques adults rely on are interactive: they establish joint attention and maintain it throughout the exchange.

Though eye-tracking is typically a methodology applied in the visual research domain, recent studies suggest its relevance in the context of music research. There exists a community of researchers interested in this kind of research from varied disciplinary backgrounds scattered across the globe. Therefore, in August 2017, an international conference was held at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt, Germany, to bring this research community together. The conference was dedicated to the topic of music and eyetracking, asking the question: what do eye movements, pupil dilation, and blinking activity tell us about musical processing? This special issue is constituted of top-scoring research from the conference and spans a range of music-related topics. From tracking the gaze of performers in musical trios to basic research on how eye movements are affected by background music, the contents of this special issue highlight a variety of experimental approaches and possible applications of eye-tracking in music research.

Pointing is a cross-cultural universal. The gesture of “canonical pointing” is acquired towards the end of the first year of life by normally developing infants. However, little is understood about how the gesture is learned and why it is acquired when it is. I advance an experimental-imitative hypothesis to explain the acquisition of the pointing gesture in infants that emphasizes the role of embodiment, sensorimotor ability, and locomotion. I begin by surveying important developments in infant embodiment and sensorimotor ability over the first year of life. These developments correlate with the acquisition of the pointing gesture and a broad range of cognitive and linguistic abilities. I explain this correlation with the help of Meltzoff ’s “like me” developmental framework. As the infant’s body matures, it increasingly sees the bodies of other mature humans as “like me”, and hence views their actions and gestures as targeted acts for imitation. The infant then experimentally tries out the observed gesture. Through experimentally employing the gesture, it comes to understand its proper sense and use, and learns something about human minds and communication along the way. I conclude by indicating new directions of empirical research suggested by the experimental-imitative hypothesis, and ontological consequences for embodied versus dualistic understandings of the mind.

Preliminary evidence from the Childhood Joint Attention Rating Scale (C-JARS; Mundy et al., 2017) suggests symptoms related to diminished joint attention and the spontaneous sharing of experience with others can be assessed with a parent-report measure in children and adolescents with autism. This study was designed to expand on the previous study by examining the validity of both a Social Symptom (SS) and a Prosocial (PS) scale of the C-JARS in a study of school-aged autistic children (n  = 89) with and without co-occurring intellectual disability (ID), as well as an age matched neurotypical sample (n  = 62). Results indicated that both C-JARS scales were sensitive and specific with respect to identifying the diagnostic status of the children. In addition, the PS scale was sensitive to differences in cognitive abilities (IQ) and sex differences in the autism group. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that joint attention and spontaneous sharing of experience symptoms a...

Objective Previous studies have suggested that a virtual classroom is immersive and ecologically valid neuropsychological assessment, but those studies have limited components for social attentions. Therefore, the objective in the current study is the development of a joint attention virtual reality (JA-VR) classroom to incorporate social attentions between a participant and a virtual avatar teacher. Methods Fifty-eight participants were recruited for current study (25 for pilot and 33 for main studies; 32.8% female, n=19; age: M=24.5, SD=4.0). We suggested a JA-VR classroom, and compared it with previous methods including a VR classroom without JA components. We conducted attention experiments with AX-version of continuous performance tasks. Results Our results suggest that the new JA-VR classroom had convergent validity with previous methods, and that the JA-VR classroom promoted attentional processing among participants better than both old VR and non-VR measures. Conclusion We add an important social attention concept to the virtual classroom, and believe that this work is an methodological foundation for the study of social attention in school life. We hope it ultimately help people with mental handicaps in social attention.

Joint attention (JA)-the human ability to coordinate our attention with that of other people-is impaired in the early stage of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, little is known about the JA skills in the younger siblings of children with ASD who do not develop ASD at 36 months of age [high-risk (HR)-noASD]. In order to advance our understanding of this topic, a prospective multicenter observational study was conducted with three groups of toddlers (age range: 18-33 months): 17 with ASD, 19 with HR-noASD and 16 with typical development (TD). All subjects underwent a comprehensive clinical assessment and an eye-tracking experiment with pre-recorded stimuli in which the visual patterns during two tasks eliciting initiating joint attention (IJA) were measured. Specifically, fixations, transitions and alternating gaze were analyzed. Clinical evaluation revealed that HR-noASD subjects had lower non-verbal cognitive skills than TD children, while similar levels of restricted and repetitive behaviors and better social communication skills were detected in comparison with ASD children. Eye-tracking paradigms indicated that HR-noASD toddlers had visual patterns resembling TD in terms of target-object-to-face gaze alternations, while their looking behaviors were similar to ASD toddlers regarding not-target-object-to-face gaze alternations. This study indicated that high-risk, unaffected siblings displayed a shared profile of IJA-eye-tracking measures with both ASD patients and TD controls, providing new insights into the characterization of social attention in this group of toddlers.

Communication Complexity Scale (CCS) scores for 269 minimally verbal participants were examined to determine if communicator behavior and task and communicator characteristics were related to scores in a manner consistent with theoretical and research evidence expectations. Each participant completed an interactive assessment with 6 joint attention tasks and 6 behavior regulation tasks. Caregivers completed the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales. Results indicated (a) joint attention tasks yielded lower scores than behavior regulation tasks, (b) older participants had lower scores, (c) individuals with autism spectrum disorder scored more similarly than those without, (d) the difference between joint attention and behavior regulation scores was greater for the autism spectrum disorder group, and (e) adaptive behavior was significantly positively related to complexity scores.

The material for this article is drawn from research carried out by the author while affiliated to the University of Hertfordshire. The research investigated art therapy for children with autism. Case studies of autistic children were made in a special school for autism over a three-year period. The author produced a model of art therapy practice which addressed the communicative sensitivity of autistic children with suggestions for its ongoing development. Many themes developed in the course of the research,' one of which is the focus of this article, namely, how art making processes may assist the development of communication skills and thereby the therapeutic relationship with children with autism. The theories found to be most useful in the development of the research were those of drawing development and early infant development within the framework of developmental psychology, and it is mainly to these that reference is made in this article. In doing so the author's intention is not to advocate a one-dimensional approach to working with children with autism but one viewpoint amongst many others of equal validity.

The present paper reports the results of two longitudinal studies of the timing of visual checking and vocalizations associated with declarative pointing between ages 12 and 17 months in order to verify a developmental progression found in an earlier study by [J. Child Language 23 (1996) 307]. The first study involved nine normally developing children followed longitudinally for 6 months and the second study included 14 additional children studied for the same time period. The results of experiment 1 did not support a developmental progression in timing of visual checking and suggested some methodological difficulties with the use of videotaped stimuli to elicit the protodeclarative. Experiment 2 systematically examined three different stimulus conditions (video, mechanical dolls, caretaker-child play) to determine differences in elicitation of protodeclarative pointing. The second experiment found that mechanical dolls were significantly more effective than video or play conditions in eliciting pointing in the participants and again found no support for a developmental progression in the timing visual checking associated with pointing in these tasks. Results are discussed in terms of methodological and theoretical implications.

Unlike any other species, humans can think about perspectives that are not currently their own. They can put themselves in the "mental shoes" of others and imagine how they perceive, think, or feel about an object or event. Perspectivity in its mature, adult form even goes beyond the ability to determine a specific person's point of view at a certain moment in time. . It entails the general comprehension that one and the same thing or event can be viewed or construed differently depending on one's standpointwhether this is a visuo-spatial, episternic, conceptual, or affective standpoint . Fro.m a developmental perspective, the question arises when and how children acquire this knowledge. We offer a new look at the early ontogeny of understanding visual perception and experiences-with a major emphasis on the ability to take and understand the perspectives of others. The central claim we aim to develop is that human children first learn about perspectives within the context ofjoint attentional engagement. Infants' ability and motivation to jointly attend to objects and events with others allows them to share perceptions and experiences from very early on in life . This sharing sets the ground for later perspective-taking. Developmental inquiries ofjoint attention and perspective-taking have mostly been conducted in separation: The term "joint visual attentio~" is often used as a synonym for the specific case of gaze following, which is rarely looked at in terms of its relation to later perspective-taking; and models of perspective-taking have failed to recognize early joint attentional skills as a foundational first step towards perspectivity (but see Martin, Sokol, and Elvers, 2008). We want to bring these two strands together and argue thatjoint attention is a necessary condition for appreciating perspectives. Perspectival differences, however distinct and incompatible they may be---in the sense that they cannot consistently be held by one person at the same time---necessarily converge on one and the same object (where "object" can refer to a thing, an event, a state of affairs etc.). They thus have at their

Fifty-nine healthy infants were filmed with their mothers and with a researcher at two, four, six and nine months in face-to-face play, and in toy-play at six and nine months. During toy-play at both ages, two indices of joint attention (JA)-infant bids for attention, and percent of time in shared attention-were assessed, along with other behavioural measures. Global ratings were made at all four ages of infants' and mothers' interactive style. The mothers varied in psychiatric history (e.g., half had experienced postpartum depression) and socioeconomic status, so their interactive styles were diverse. Variation in nine-month infant JA-with mother and with researcher-was predicted by variation in maternal behaviour and global ratings at six months, but not at two or four months. Concurrent adult behaviour also influenced nine-month JA, independent of infant ratings. Six-month maternal behaviours that positively predicted later JA (some of which remained important at nine months) included teaching, conjoint action on a toy, and global sensitivity. Other behaviours (e.g., entertaining) negatively predicted later JA. Findings are discussed in terms of social-learning and neurobiological accounts of JA emergence.

Is there a qualitative difference between apes' and human 'ability to estimate others' mental states', a.k.a. 'Theory-of-Mind'? After opting for the idea that expectations are empty profiles that recognize a particular content when it arrives, I apply the same description to 'vicarious expectations'-very probably present in apes. Thus, (empty) vicarious expectations and one's own (full) contents are distinguished without need of meta-representation. Then, I propose: First, vicarious expectations are enough to support apes' Theory-of-Mind (including 'spontaneous altruism'). Second, since vicarious expectations require a profile previously built in the subject that activates them, this subject cannot activate any vicarious expectation of mental states that are intrinsically impossible for him. Third, your mental states that think of me as a distal individual are intrinsically impossible states for me, and therefore, to estimate them, I must estimate your mental contents. This ability (the original nucleus of human Theory-of-Mind) is essential in human lifestyle. It is involved in unpleasant and pleasant self-conscious emotions, which respectively contribute to 'social order' and to cultural innovations. More basically, it makes possible the human (prelinguistic or linguistic) communication, since it originally made possible the understanding of others' mental states as states that are addressed to me, and that are therefore impossible for me.

Eye contact and pointing are typical gestures in order to direct another individual's attention toward a target. We previously investigated on Japanese monkeys whether joint attention ability encouraged by eye contact and pointing was associated with the imitation of human's actions. The monkeys with the joint attention skills showed the imitation of human's actions. In the current study, we investigated on a monkey whether joint attention ability also facilitated the imitation of human body-movements. Results showed that the monkey being taught eye contact and pointing showed the imitation of human body-movements. These results suggest that the monkeys have basic potential for following another individual's motion, and that what imitation expresses depends on where the monkeys are paying attention. Thus, eye contact and pointing are suitable for directing the monkey's attention toward the human.

This study reports results of a randomized controlled trial aimed at joint attention (JA) and symbolic play (SP) in preschool children with autism, with prediction to language outcome 12 months later. Participants were 58 children (46 boys) with autism between 3 and 4 years of age. Children were randomized to a JA intervention, an SP intervention, or control group. Interventions were conducted 30 min daily for 5-6 weeks. Assessments of JA skills, SP skills, mother-child interactions, and language development were collected at 4 time points: pre-and postintervention and 6 and 12 months postintervention by independent testers. Results indicate that expressive language gains were greater for both treatment groups compared with the control group, and results could not be explained by differences in other interventions in which children participated. For children beginning treatment with the lowest language levels, the JA intervention improved language outcome significantly more than did the SP or control interventions. These findings suggest clinically significant benefits of actively treating JA and SP skills in young children with autism.

This study reports results of a randomized controlled trial aimed at joint attention (JA) and symbolic play (SP) in preschool children with autism, with prediction to language outcome 12 months later. Participants were 58 children (46 boys) with autism between 3 and 4 years of age. Children were randomized to a JA intervention, an SP intervention, or control group. Interventions were conducted 30 min daily for 5-6 weeks. Assessments of JA skills, SP skills, mother-child interactions, and language development were collected at 4 time points: pre-and postintervention and 6 and 12 months postintervention by independent testers. Results indicate that expressive language gains were greater for both treatment groups compared with the control group, and results could not be explained by differences in other interventions in which children participated. For children beginning treatment with the lowest language levels, the JA intervention improved language outcome significantly more than did the SP or control interventions. These findings suggest clinically significant benefits of actively treating JA and SP skills in young children with autism.

This report examined the effect of methylphenidate on social communication and self-regulation in children with Pervasive Developmental Disorders and hyperactivity in a secondary analysis of RUPP Autism Network data. Participants were 33 children (29 boys) between the ages of 5 and 13 years who participated in a four-week crossover trial of placebo and increasing doses of methylphenidate given in random order each for one week. Observational measures of certain aspects of children's social communication, self-regulation, and affective behavior were obtained each week. A significant positive effect of methylphenidate was seen on children's use of joint attention initiations, response to bids for joint attention, self-regulation, and regulated affective state. The results go beyond the recent literature and suggest that methylphenidate may have positive effects on social behaviors in children with PDD and hyperactivity.

The ability to socialize in early life depends on developing commonalities with others. But what exactly constitutes the "sense of us" or the "we-perspective"? The interaction theory (IT) offers an attractive alternative to mindreading theories, such as theory-theory (TT) and simulation theory (ST), by presenting a further development of enactivism. During embodied interactions, individuals "directly" and "smartly" perceive the mental states of others. Despite the intuitive appeal of direct acquaintance with others' mental states, IT relies on crude metaphors. We aim to retain IT's core intuition-the embodied, embedded, enactive, and affective interaction-within a new framework. First, we introduce Piccinini's key notion of situated neural representations, which fills the gaps that IT leaves behind. Second, we adopt Nicolelis's concept of "brainets". When one animal observes another's behavior, their brains synchronize by simulating the same means to achieve similar goals. We then interpret brainets as situated neural representations: embodied, embedded, enactive, and affective.

What is the relationship between the sense of togetherness and collective intentionality? While the nature of the relationship between phenomenal and intentional properties has been the subject of an extensive literature for individual mental states, it has rarely been scrutinized in the case of collective or shared mental states. In this paper, I propose to account for this relationship by defending a "consciousness-first" approach to collective intentionality. More precisely, I argue that collective intentionality should be considered as phenomenal-intentional, namely as an intentional property that obtains in virtue of a specific experiential property that I call "the sense of togetherness".

Responding appropriately to gaze cues is essential for fluent social interaction, playing a crucial role in social learning, collaboration, threat assessment and understanding others’ intentions. Previous research has shown that responses to gaze cues can be studied by investigating the gaze-cuing effect (i.e. the tendency for observers to respond more quickly to targets in locations that were cued by others’ gaze than to uncued targets). A recent study demonstrating that macaques demonstrate larger gaze-cuing effects when viewing dominant conspecifics than when viewing subordinate conspecifics suggests that cues of dominance modulate the gaze-cuing effect in at least one primate species. Here, we show a similar effect of facial cues associated with dominance on gaze cuing in human observers: at short viewing times, observers demonstrated a greater cuing effect for gaze cues from masculinized (i.e. dominant) faces than from feminized (i.e. subordinate) faces. Moreover, this effect o...

The paper investigates the use of gaze along with deictics and embodied pointing to accomplish reference and joint attention in naturally occurring social interaction. It assumes that deixis, in its primordial use in face-to-face interaction, is an embodied phenomenon that involves gestural pointing as well as visual perception, thus giving rise to recurring gaze practices of the participants. The analysis draws on a model of the interactional organization of deictic reference and joint attention that serves as a sequential framework for investigating the functions of eye gaze. The analysis focuses on two meta-perceptive practices: gaze following and gaze monitoring. It shows that the use of these practices in naturally occurring social activities is context dependent, positionally sensitive, tied to participant roles, and temporally fine-tuned to the stream of the participants' verbal and embodied conduct. The sequential analysis of these practices further documents that meta-perceptive gaze practices contribute to the constitution of joint attention as mutually known by the participants. The data for this study were recorded with two pairs of mobile eye tracking glasses and an external camera. Methodologically situated within the framework of conversation analysis and interactional linguistics where video recording is used, the study breaks new ground by employing a technology almost exclusively applied in experimental frameworks to record ordinary social activities "in the wild." In striving for ecologically valid and precise eye gaze data, it also contributes to a refinement of concepts developed in experimental paradigms by adapting them to qualitative research within the field of multimodal conversation analysis and interactional linguistics.

Coordinating in action groups consists of continuously adapting behaviors in response to fluctuating conditions, ideally with limited disruption to a group's collective performance. Through an 18-month ethnography of how members of a community choir maintained beautiful, ongoing performance, I explored how they continuously adapted their coordinating, starting when they felt that their collective performance was fragmented or falling apart. The process model I developed shows that this aesthetic experience-the sense of fragmentation based on inputs from the bodily senses-leads to emotional triggering, meaning group members' emotions prompt changes in their attention and behavior. They then distribute their attention in new ways, increasing their focus on both global qualities of their ongoing performance (in this context, the musical score and conductor) and local qualities (singers' contributions). My findings suggest that by changing what aspects of a situation compose their immediate experience, action group members can adapt their coordinating behaviors by changing their heed: the behavior that demonstrates their attentiveness and awareness. The intertwining of attention and emotions helps explain how groups move between heedless and heedful interrelating over time, leading to an aesthetic experience of collective performance as being whole or coherent. My research shows that embodied forms of cognition (what we know from direct experience of an environment) complement accounts of how representational forms of knowledge (what we know from symbols, concepts, or ideas) facilitate real-time adaptation in groups. These insights have implications for a range of organizations engaged in complex action group work.

VR P300-based BCI has proven to be a suitable method for training social attention skills in youngsters with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In this study, we present a method that could be used in such an application to identify which object the user is paying attention to in a virtual environment by means of EEG recordings only. Temporal and time-frequency features were explored. Furthermore, the prediction accuracy of linear and nonlinear classification methods was assessed and compared, along with their computational times and complexity, and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) yielded the best overall performance (82%). The successful predictions and low computational times demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed solution for a VR-BCI neurorehabilitation tool.

The study analysed the perlocutionary effects elicited by an autistic child through the use of directive speech acts during joint comprehension activities. While studies related to ASD are largely conducted quantitatively, this study incorporated a case study method involving a Malaysian English speaking ASD child, to analyse the conversational interactions between the subject and the interlocutor during joint comprehension activities. This case study draws on Searle's (1975) framework, under which the speech acts are described alongside perlocutionary actions which are analysed through discourse analysis. The data of the case study was collected through audio/video recordings, and triangulated with observations during the joint comprehension activities, as well as interviews with the parents and teacher. The definitions and classifications of the disorder were reviewed from the first description by and the Theory of Mind (Leslie, 1987) interpretation of the core impairments in Autism, to the current 5 th Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V, 2013) classifications. Many patterns of communication arose from the use of the directive speech acts which impede and support interaction. Findings also revealed that specific communication skills used by the special needs facilitator have implications for communication in English where meaningful interactions can be formed with the Autistic child. This could help to create awareness among educators in designing special needs learning materials, especially in Malaysia.

This article explores the cognitive underpinnings of English determinatives, focusing on how they structure reference through frame semantics, prototype theory, and accessibility theory. It examines the role of determinatives in attention management, speaker-hearer mental spaces, and conceptual categorization. The study argues that determinatives such as the, a, some, this, that function as cognitive cues that guide discourse interpretation [8;9]. By analyzing their role in reference management, salience, and categorization, this article provides a theoretical framework for understanding determinatives as more than mere syntactic elements but as essential components of human cognition.

Infants vary in their ability to follow others' gazes, but it is unclear how these individual differences emerge. We tested whether social motivation levels in early infancy predict later gaze following skills. We longitudinally tracked infants' (N = 82) gazes and pupil dilation while they observed videos of a woman looking into the camera simulating eye contact (i.e., mutual gaze) and then gazing toward one of two objects, at 2, 4, 6, 8, and 14 months of age. To improve measurement validity, we used confirmatory factor analysis to combine multiple observed measures to index the underlying constructs of social motivation and gaze following. Infants' social motivation-indexed by their speed of social orienting, duration of mutual gaze, and degree of pupil dilation during mutual gaze-was developmentally stable and positively predicted the development of gaze following-indexed by their proportion of time looking to the target object, first object look difference scores, and first face-to-object saccade difference scores-from 6 to 14 months of age. These findings suggest that infants' social motivation likely plays a role in the development of gaze following and highlight the use of a multi-measure

It is widely agreed that human linguistic communication draws on theory-of-mind abilities more sophisticated than those possessed by our great ape relatives. However, controversy persists regarding the role of enhanced theory-of-mind abilities in explaining the ultimate origins of language. On one common view, an upgrade in our theory-of-mind abilities was a crucial driver of the expansion of communicative complexity in our line, ultimately culminating in the first human (proto)languages. In contrast, on a rival and increasingly influential view, the enhanced theory-of-mind abilities of humans are instead understood to be a cultural evolutionary product of the appearance of human (proto)languages, with these theory-of-mind abilities feeding back to subsequently affect the shape (e.g., the flexibility) of human linguistic communication. This article aims to progress this debate, and ultimately bridge this divide. Towards this end, we make use of recent empirical work on interactive repair in homesigners (i.e., individuals who lack meaningful exposure to natural language models, but whose developmental environment is otherwise normal). Against the strongest versions of cultural evolutionary thinking in this area, we argue that the way in which homesigners flexibly request repair from conversational partners reveals the possession of theory-of-mind abilities that are distinctively human in their sophistication. Nevertheless, we see reason for positing a residual theory-of-mind gap between homesigners and individuals with normal language exposure, and suggest that this gap may be naturally filled by the linguistic tools and processes emphasized by cultural evolutionary theorists, thereby offering a synthesis of the two schools of thought.

This study investigated the attachment behaviors in children with autism. Ten boys with autism, 10 boys with Down syndrome and 10 boys with typical development who were around 4 years old, participated in the study. A free-play session, which consisted of five episodes, was used to observe the interactive behaviors between the child and the mother, and also an unfamiliar person (the stranger). No significant differences were found among the three groups concerning most of the attachment behaviors. However, the children with autism presented a higher frequency of avoidant behavior, only in the first episode. The comparison of differences inside the group showed that children with autism interacted more with their mothers than with the stranger. These results show the attachment behavior among autistic children with their mothers and the advantages of using a coding system that takes into account the particularities of this behavior.

Este estudou investigou evidências de comportamentos de apego em crianças com autismo. Participaram 10 meninos com autismo, 10 com síndrome de Down e 10 com desenvolvimento típico, equiparados pela idade, cuja média foi de, aproximadamente, 4 anos. Uma sessão de observação de brincadeira livre, com cinco episódios, foi utilizada para avaliar os comportamentos interativos da criança com a mãe e com uma pessoa não-familiar (o estranho). Não foram encontradas diferenças significativas entre os grupos, quanto à maioria dos comportamentos de apego. Contudo, o grupo com autismo apresentou uma freqüência maior de comportamento de esquiva, do que os outros grupos, apenas no 1º episódio. As comparações intragrupos mostraram que as crianças com autismo interagiram mais com a mãe, do que com o estranho. Esses resultados demonstram a ocorrência de apego entre crianças com autismo e suas mães e as vantagens de se usar análises que considerem as peculiaridades desses comportamentos.