Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Joint attention (JA) is a crucial form of early communication strongly associated with word learning and vocabulary development. However, limited research has examined JA in children older than 36 months, despite its potential role in classroom learning. This study employed head-mounted eye-tracking in a social interactive context to investigate the relationship between JA and word recall. During the study, JA was measured as parent-child pairs engaged in play with unfamiliar objects, with parents actively naming the objects. Subsequently, children were tested on their ability to recall the names of these objects. The results suggest that JA significantly predicted the recall of unfamiliar words but was not related to vocabulary development. These results contribute to the growing body of research on JA by providing insights into the potential mechanisms supporting word learning and vocabulary development.