Attention in Context: Social and Cultural Insights

Nothing about infancy is devoid of context, as nothing about human development is devoid of context. The socioculturalists (e.g., Lev Vygotsky, Barbara Rogoff, Jerome Bruner), along with anthropologists (e.g., Michael Tomasello) and language researchers (e.g., Catherine Snow), have identified the role that social relationships have in children’s development of thinking. While it is clear that we have the neural capacity for attention, our neurological potential is not meaningfully considered without the context in which it develops, and that is through human interaction situated in a multitude of rich contexts that are shaped by specific cultures.

Joint Attention and Intersubjectivity

The idea of joint attention is, in some ways, just as it sounds: two people sharing attention. But it is more complex than that, so let that idea be our starting point.

When we are thinking of infants and how they make sense of the world, their attention is drawn to various stimuli in the environment — not only because of their curiosity but because they are looking at, or listening to, what the adults are attending to in their environment. Once an infant and an adult share mental focus on the same thing (e.g., a light in the room), they are both engaged in a mental process (attention) together, and this offers a powerful opportunity to learn. In language development, we can see how an adult drawing attention to an object in the room and an infant or toddler observing something like a light in a room will often involve the adult providing a label.

Intersubjectivity is the mutual (“inter”) awareness of perceiving and attending to the same stimulus at the same time, and you can imagine what opportunities this might provide for learning.

Complete the simulation exercise below to explore how intersubjectivity plays out in day-to-day interactions with infants and toddlers.

Through intersubjectivity, young children are able to share a mental perspective on the world that acts as a means to both guide their attention to what is important in the environment and provide a social interaction (e.g., with a parent or a caregiver) through which to learn about novel items in the world. So, while we are generally attracted to novelty (Gauvain, p. 23), novelty without learning would not be adequate for children’s thinking to develop.

This means that children’s thinking, starting with attention, is intrinsically bound to the people and the situations around them. What does this mean in different cultures? Do we all pay attention to the world similarly across cultures? Surely, we do not, and as a result, how adults and older children guide younger children’s attention varies tremendously.

We will return to the notion of intersubjectivity as we look at other aspects of children’s thinking. Now, we will turn to studies that have been carried out on attention in young children.