SocialBabyBrain

This research project aims to advance the field of joint attention development in infancy by examining how behavioural manifestations of joint attention, since its emergence up to the second year of life, relate to the maturation of specific brain networks, and how changes in brain activation over time might explain individual differences in later socio-communicative abilities, such as language and social competence. Thus, the threefold objectives of this project are 1) to map, using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), the brain regions activated in response to joint attention stimuli during the emergence of the ability (10 months) and at an intermediate stage (13 months) of its early development; 2) to analyse how these brain activation patterns relate to behavioural manifestations of joint attention on the same time points; and 3) to examine the association between brain activation to joint attention and subsequent language development and social competence at 24 months.