Nonverbal communication, affective sharing, and intersubjectivity

A critical difference between nonverbal joint attention and requesting skills may lie in their conveyance of affect as part of the communicative act. This study of 32 infants (mean age = 20.2 months) indicated that more positive affect was displayed in association with joint attention rather than requesting acts. Thus, joint attention behaviors not only involve the coordination of attention to objects and events, but also the capacity to share affective experience vis-à-vis objects and events. Therefore, measures of joint attention behaviors may provide an operationalization of one aspect of intersubjectivity in infancy.