Research Spotlight
Reading Exercise
This chapter’s companion reading spotlights the following article:
Senzaki, S., & Shimizu, Y. (2022). Different types of focus: Caregiver-child interaction and changes in preschool children’s attention in two cultures. Child Development, 93(3), e348–e356.
The studies discussed in this chapter so far have been largely conducted in laboratories. They have shown how infants and young children attend to various objects, sounds, and other stimuli in their environment. However, the studies fail to identify mechanisms through which infants develop.
Social mechanisms and the motivation for mental focus on one stimulus over another are always going to depend on environmental factors such as:
- What objects are in the environment?
- Are objects accessible to touch, or are they beyond reach?
- What does my sibling do when a particular sound occurs: do they ignore it or look to see where it is coming from?
In this way, attention is guided towards things that are noteworthy or important to others (not only to the infant), and this embedded context of development and learning carries tremendous cultural meaning.
In the next pages, we will look at research on selecting, managing, and directing attention in more socially situated environments.
