Infant Joint Attention, Temperament, and Social Competence in Preschool

Infant joint attention has been observed to be related to social-emotional outcomes in at-risk children. To address whether this relation is also evident in typically developing children, 52 children were tested at 12, 15, 24, and 30 months to examine associations between infant joint attention and social outcomes. Twelve-month initiating and responding to joint attention were related to 30-month social competence and externalizing behavior, even when accounting for 15-month temperament ratings, 24-month cognition and language, and demographic variables. These results suggest that, in addition to associations with language and cognition, infant joint attention reflects robust aspects of development that are related to individual differences in the emergence of social and be-havioral competence in childhood. Understanding the early foundations of social com-petence is an important issue for developmental science. Social competence contributes to a wide array of adaptive outcomes among children: from school readiness and academic success (Blair, 2002; Raver, 2002), to risk and resilience in the face of vulnerability for developmental psychopathology (Masten & Coatsworth, 1998). Previous research on this topic has examined aspects of caregiving, attachment, temperament, and the development of self-regulation, including inhibitory control i