In our current programme of research, we are currently coding and analyzing a SSHRC-funded program of research with 9-, 10-, 11-, 12-, 15- and 18-month-old infants that documents the timing and coordination of early communicative gestures and their relation to measures of language and the quality and parent-infant interaction. These data include mother-infant free play sessions and babies being tested by an experimenter with a battery of tests that assess the infants' ability to coordinate their attention with others (the Early Social Communication Scale, ESCS, developed by Mundy and colleagues). 

We are now analyzing other aspects of our very rich dataset from our ethological systems perspective. Our more systems level of analysis has led us to look in careful detail at the real time dynamics of the interaction and include a crucial temporal dimension into our analysis of joint attention. Most researchers use ‘time’ as a means with which to code behaviours as present or absent. For example, a child must point or follow gaze within 2 seconds for it be classified as related to the action of an experimenter in a testing situation or a caregiver in a naturalistic observation. We are finding interesting patterns of coordination and tightening of temporal sequences in key ESCS variables that can be revealed through our more microlevel analyses. We are beginning to submit several studies from these data for presentation at conferences and publication. 

Our next program of research will address the problem of the transition from early social awareness at 2-6 months of age and the sorts of joint attentional competencies that emerge around 8-12 months that we focussed on our present work. In so doing, we will extend our research program backwards in developmental time to better understand our present findings. In the proposed program of research, we will use test mother-infant dyads at 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 months to assess the relation, or lack thereof, between the skills that emerge in the first year. We will also focus on the role of dyadic affectivity in the development of infants' joint attention skills, and examine how mothers' affect, engagement, parenting style, and communicative style fosters the development of such skills. These early measures will be linked to social, language, parenting, temperament, and ESCS cognitive measures during at the end of the first year.