The affective mechanism underlying joint attention and joint action in infancy and toddlerhood

在目前的项目“婴幼儿期共同注意和共同行动的情感机制”中，我们研究了幼儿与他人交往的内在动机的发展。合作互动为努力维持社会关系的个体提供了外在的物质和社会利益。引人注目的是，即使没有直接的外在利益，蹒跚学步的孩子也会与他人共同关注并帮助他人。这就提出了一个问题，即与他人互动本身是否对生命头两年的幼儿有内在的回报。有人提出，婴儿已经具有与他人分享注意力和目标的内在动机。例如，联合注意力的能力在7至9个月大时发展。然而，到目前为止，很少有人知道的潜在的情绪和动机机制的联合注意力和联合行动。先前的研究主要通过对可观察到的表情（包括微笑）进行视频编码来捕捉儿童的情绪反应。在这里，我们结合联合收割机我们的专业知识，在国家的最先进的生理和行为的方法，使用面部肌电图（EMG）和姿势跟踪，客观地评估婴儿和幼儿的情感反应，在联合注意和联合行动。在这个项目中，我们使用交互式眼动跟踪来让婴儿与化身进行互动。我们操纵婴儿，不管他们是否成功地尝试启动联合注意。我们期望10个月大的婴儿在成功的互动中表现出积极的情感，并进一步研究这种积极的情感是否与婴儿随后对互动伙伴的偏好以及婴儿的信息处理有关。在该项目中，我们直接评估了10至24个月大的儿童在社会互动背景下的情绪。我们专注于两个既定的社会互动现象：协作和帮助。我们计划调查（1）观察合作和帮助以及（2）积极合作和帮助是否会产生积极的影响，以及（3）这两种情绪反应是否相关。为了达到这个目的，我们采用了肌电图和身体姿势跟踪，这两个既定的积极情绪的措施。通过关注潜在的情感机制，这两个项目的结果将提供深刻的见解，幼儿的内在动机的早期发展与他人互动。

In the current project The affective mechanism underlying joint attention and joint action in infancy and toddlerhood, we investigate the development of young children’s intrinsic motivation to engage with others.Cooperative interactions provide extrinsic material and social benefits to individuals who strive to maintain social relationships. Strikingly, toddlers engage in joint attention with and help others even in the absence of immediate extrinsic benefits. This raises the question whether interacting with others is in and by itself intrinsically rewarding for young children in the first two years of life. It was proposed that already infants are intrinsically motivated to share attention and goals with others. For instance, the capacity for joint attention develops between 7 and 9 months of age. However, to date little is known about the underlying emotional and motivational mechanisms of joint attention and joint action. Previous research captured children’s emotional responses predominantly via video coding of observable expressions including smiling. Here, we combine our expertise on state-of-the-art physiological and behavioral methodology to use facial electromyography (EMG) and posture tracking, to objectively assess infants’ and toddler’s affective responses during joint attention and joint action. In the project we use interactive eye tracking to put infants in a position to engage with an avatar. We manipulate, whether or not infants are successful in their attempts to initiate joint attention. We expect 10-month-olds to show positive affect during a successful interaction and will furthermore examine whether this positive affect is related to infants’ subsequent preference for interaction partners as well as infants’ information processing.In the project, we directly assess 10- to 24-months-old children’s emotions in the context of social interactions. We focus on two established phenomena of social interactions: collaboration and helping. We plan to investigate whether (1) observing collaboration and helping as well as (2) active collaboration and helping result in positive affect and (3) whether both emotional response are related. To this end we apply EMG and body posture tracking, two established measures of positive emotions.Through focusing on the underlying affective mechanism the results of both projects will provide profound insights into the early development of young children’s intrinsic motivation to interact with others.