August 1, 2025

Social Connectedness Without Eye Contact: 18- But Not 9-Month-Olds Use Proximal Touch to Infer Third-Party Joint Attention During Observational Learning

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Observational learning enhances joint attention in 18-month-olds through touch and eye contact, suggesting evolving social cues.

Eighteen-month-olds showed improved object encoding in all conditions with social cues like touch or eye contact.
Nine-month-olds’ object encoding only benefited from eye contact, indicating a limited understanding of joint attention.
The study used a task involving videos of adults looking at objects to measure infants' looking time preferences.
Findings emphasize the flexible nature of joint attention as infants develop a broader understanding of social connectedness.

Thiele et al. (2025) studied this question.

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