What is joint attention?  

Joint attention is the practice of two individuals interacting, cooperating, and sharing their focus on a specific task, object, or event. This can be during a conversation, focusing on a topic within a lesson or completing an activity.  

Joint attention is often only referred to when it occurs between two individuals only who are purposefully and specifically coordinating their focus of attention with that of the other person with an understanding that they are working toward the same aims, goals or purpose. However, with this being said, joint attention refers to the depth or complexity of the attention but solely to the two individuals coordinating their focus on the aim or goal. A type of focus based on the depth of the shared attention is known as ‘sustained shared thinking’.  

It can be seen practically when a learner fully engages in their session with ‘learning ready behaviour’ such as eye contact with the teacher while disseminating information about a specific topic. Due to this, joint attention is often viewed as a social behaviour as it relies on traditional social interaction skills.  

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Initiating joint attention 

When it comes to joint attention, there are typically two ways in which this concept can occur. These include initiating joint attention and responding to joint attention. Initiating joint attention refers to the act of actively directing someone’s attention towards a particular object or event while responding to joint attention involves reacting to someone else’s attempt to direct your attention towards something. In both cases, joint attention is essential for effective communication and social interaction.

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Initiating joint attention 

This method of joint attention arises when an individual starts or initiates social interaction. This can be a visual, physical or vocal gesture to another person, which starts an interaction. This method of joint attention is the more complex of the two as it requires sophisticated social interaction skills, abilities and comprehension. As it relies on the individual being able to alert the other person to the presence and desire to communicate, share their meaning and maintain the focus of both the other individual and the focus on the joint attention’s aim, goal or task.  

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Responding to joint attention  

This method of joint attention arises when the individual is responding to the efforts of another individual to gain their attention. This method of joint attention is seen as easier to initiate as it is just the result of responding rather than initiating, which requires more simplistic socialisation skills, abilities and comprehension.  

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Is joint attention important? 

Joint attention is often seen as part of the natural development of children and young people and forms part of their personal, social and communication areas of development. The initiating of joint attention by a child or young person can indicate that they are socially motivated and inquisitive. However, as joint attention does not just relate to a singular set of skills and abilities but instead a collection and, in effect, requires a level of social skills and motivation, it can be an early indicator of a developmental delay or disability such as Autism. This is partly due to a common autistic trait of having and displaying limited social skills, abilities, and compression.  

The difficulties that individuals will find who struggle with joint attention, be that via initiated joint attention or responding joint attention, is that education is based around the idea and concept of ‘learning ready behaviours’. This means that teachers, educators, and the wider education system expect and promote this narrow social norm where learners must outwardly demonstrate behaviours that show that they are learning, to look like they are following every word of the teacher, even if this is not the case. This is because, within this social norm, it is seen as though if an individual looks like they are learning, they are seen as learning.  

The complication arises, though, for children who are neurodiverse. This is because these individuals will often struggle to portray this social norm of ‘learning-ready behaviour.’ They will fidget, look around the room or stim, leading to the misunderstanding that they are not focused, engaged, or learning despite this often being a behaviour to focus the brain and their concentration on what is being presented, disseminated and taught to them. This poses the question of whether we place too much importance on joint attention and, more broadly, ‘learning ready behaviours.’  

Alternatively, with that being said, it is important to remember that this skill can be supported in its development and deployment within children, young people and, more broadly, all individuals. It is also important to remember that everyone is unique and develops at a different rate than others. For example, despite the normal development rate of joint attention between birth and three, children cannot develop this at a more gradual pace.