Joint attention emerges in infants around nine months through triadic gaze-following

Evidence

Starting at nine months, the baby moves from dyadic relationships (subject–object) to triadic relationships, where the attention of two subjects affects the way in which each considers the object. If adults divert their gaze, children learn to follow the direction in which they are looking: ‘I’ am attentive to what you pay attention to. Below the level of the great masses of collective attention as channelled by the media, and above the level of the couple formed by a mother and child or two partners in a loving relationship, the sphere of joint attention is the sphere of the ‘small groups’ studied by Roland Barthes in his course on communal life at the Collège de France. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 71

Categorization

• XREF: The dyadic-to-triadic developmental shift parallels the reader’s intermediate level between collective media flows and intimate dyads, a structural map useful across projects. — connects to: Mentalizing abilities emerge by eight months and sharpen in toddlers — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 189