The analysis of attentive components of Responding Joint Attention in infancy

The contribution aims to highlight a lesser-known aspect of Professor Carlo Umiltà's scientific work: the application of knowledge gained from the adult attentional system to the developmental domain, and specifically, to the study of neonatal attentional competence and the newborns' face preference response. These early abilities are crucial as they enable and modulate the baby's interactions with conspecifics, laying the ground for the development of complex socio-cognitive skills such as Joint Attention, which typically emerge during the first year of life. The study presented here examines the influence of attentional disengagement, orientation, and engagement mechanisms on the receptive component of Joint Attention (RJA, Responding Joint Attention). Using webcam-based remote eye-tracking, the eye movements of infants aged between 10 and 36 months were recorded during an adapted RJA task. The results demonstrate the possibility of obtaining quantitative measures of the attentional mechanisms involved in complex phenomena, such as RJA, in preverbal infants, even through remote assessments.