Abstract
Joint attention skills are an important part of human cultural learning. However, little is
known about the emergence and meaning of these skills in early ontogeny. The
development of, and relation among, various joint attention skills was assessed.
Seventy-two 5 to 10-month-old infants were tested on a variety of joint attention tasks.
Intercorrelations among these tasks were sparse, which puts into question the meaning
of these various skills. In addition, the majority of infants exhibited some joint attention
skill before 9 months of age, which points to a more gradual development of joint
attention skills than suggested by previous research.
