Joint attention depends on bidirectional attention circulation, not equality

Evidence

The first is a PRINCIPLE OF RECIPROCITY: attention must be able to circulate bidirectionally between the parties involved. The infant learns to follow the parents’ gaze in a relationship where the parents also endeavour to follow the gaze of the infant. The model here is provided by the conversation situation, whose etymology suggests that it is precisely a matter of knowing whether ‘to turn together the one towards the other’ (convertere). There is conversation (rather than peroration) to the extent that a principle of reciprocity invites an alternation of roles between those speaking and those listening. This requirement for reciprocity does not necessarily imply a perfectly equal relation, any more than it implies an equitable division of speaking time. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 248

Categorization

• DEFINE: Breaks down the second defining trait of joint attention — reciprocity — with the convertere etymology as its anchor.
• XREF: Reciprocity as antidote to asymmetry joins the earlier ‘Craft and Method’ interest in the Frankfurt School’s critique of the culture industry. — connects to: Mutual wariness of observed and observer makes attention a joint encounter — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 380; Enunciative power asymmetry still obligates speakers to give attention to get attention — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 265

Broader Connections

• Mutual wariness of observed and observer makes attention a joint encounter #expands (0.78) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 380