Abstract
Cooperative social interaction is a complex skill that involves maintaining shared attention and continually negotiating a common frame of reference. Privileged in human evolution, cooperation provides support for the development of social-cognitive skills. We hypothesize that providing audio support for capturing playmates' attention will increase cooperative play in groups of young children. Attention capture was manipulated via an audio-augmented toy to boost children's attention bids. Study 1 (48 6- to 11-year-olds) showed that the augmented toy yielded significantly more cooperative play in triads compared to the same toy without augmentation. In Study 2 (33 7- to 9-year-olds) the augmented toy supported greater success of attention bids, which were associated with longer cooperative play, associated in turn with better group narratives. The results show how cooperation requires moment-by-moment coordination of attention and how we can manipulate environments to reveal and support mechanisms of social interaction. Our findings have implications for understanding the role of joint attention in the development of cooperative action and shared understanding.
Highlights
Humans, it is claimed, evolved to cooperate to a greater extent than other primates, cooperating on a large scale and with a range of others, not just kin (Boyd and Richerson, 2009; Sterelny, 2012)
In Study 2 we investigate how the outcome of bids for coordinated attention relate to the frequency of cooperative play in repeated and sustained play sessions, and how this would influence the quality of a group product, shared narrative, after the play sessions
We argued above that capturing attention through audio plays an important role in early mother-child interaction, and this is a capacity that is even more crucial when playing with peers, who may be less inclined to focus intently on scaffolding interactions with playmates than a supportive caregiver does with a young child
Summary
It is claimed, evolved to cooperate to a greater extent than other primates, cooperating on a large scale and with a range of others, not just kin (Boyd and Richerson, 2009; Sterelny, 2012). Deficits in elements of cooperative behavior, e.g., in referential pointing, the capacity for shared attention or language, may limit opportunities for socialcognitive development, for example in children with autism. We know little about how specific elements of behavior, such as attention sharing, might contribute to sustained cooperation in extended natural social interaction in childhood, beyond the point of initial skill acquisition. Children at this stage have acquired skills in attention, intention understanding and theory of mind, but how do they recruit and coordinate those skills in complex social interactions with peers? Children at this stage have acquired skills in attention, intention understanding and theory of mind, but how do they recruit and coordinate those skills in complex social interactions with peers? In the current studies, we investigate first the feasibility of manipulating the frequency of cooperative play using auditory stimuli (Study 1) and the role of such stimuli in supporting cooperative play by manipulating the probability of successful attention-getting in triadic play sessions (Study 2)
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