Conversation attentiveness and following in 12- and 18-week-old infants

In recent years, the investigation of social transactional factors in early language and prelinguistic development have played an important role in reshaping concepts of communication and its ontogenesis. The present study reports findings concerning young infants' dispositions to follow the conversational interchanges of spontaneous adult dialogues. Two of 13 12-week-old infants (15%) and 8 of 12 18-week-old infants (67%) showed organized shifts in visual attentiveness that were co-incident with shifts in speaking that occurred between adult speakers. Conversation monitoring of this sort went on in some instances for as long as 2 to 3 min. The data are discussed from the standpoints of cognition-attention, affect, and subjectivity.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/26210/1/0000290.pd