Coordination of caregivers' (N = 50, five fathers and 45 mothers) and 9-month-old infants' (15 girls, 34 boys, one not reported) gaze during naturalistic play with a puzzle and activity board was examined using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model within a Dynamic Structural Equation Modeling framework. This approach allows for the simultaneous estimation of each partner's effect on their own subsequent looking and on their partner's subsequent looking. Analysis of gaze data from head-mounted eye trackers worn by North American, middle-class, racially and ethnically diverse caregivers and infants (21 infants and 25 parents were White and not Hispanic; the remaining identified as Asian, Black, Multiracial, or another race, and/or as Hispanic) revealed that infants' and caregivers' looks at a moment was related both to their own subsequent looks and to their partners' subsequent looks. Moreover, infants' looks to their parents' faces more strongly predicted parents' subsequent looks to their infants' faces than the reverse, suggesting that mutual gaze was primarily driven by infants' attention. In contrast, there was no difference in infants' or parents' influence on their partners' looking at objects, indicating that joint attention emerged through mutual coordination. Furthermore, there was a stronger effect of gaze on subsequent gaze for infants than for parents, suggesting that infants' attention was more sustained and less flexible than that of their caregivers. This work highlights the co-constructed nature of the moment-to-moment coordination of attention between caregivers and infants. SUMMARY: We applied the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model within Dynamic Structural Equation Modeling to capture second-by-second coordination of attention between caregivers and their 9-month-old infants. We replicated in two naturalistic play settings that infants rarely look at parents' faces and look more towards objects than caregivers. We demonstrated that parents and infants influence each other's subsequent in-the-moment attention during episodes of mutual gaze and joint attention. Mutual gaze was primarily infant-driven, whereas object-focused joint attention was reciprocal between partners; infants also showed "stickier" attention than caregivers.

The CODE model: Object-mediated play as a scalable framework for dyadic co-regulation in early childhood.

Initiate-manage-sustain: A multimodal conversation analytic approach to understanding therapeutic engagement for children with autism spectrum disorder.

A recognition method of soybean varieties based on near-infrared spectroscopy and improved deep learning model.

ABSTRACT Previous research has shown that children’s referential choices are influenced by pragmatic factors in discourse (e.g., prior mention) and perceptual contexts (e.g., joint attention). However, most studies focused primarily on the verbal modality, with relatively little attention paid to children’s multimodal referential competence. To address this gap, the present study examined Mandarin-speaking children’s verbal and non-verbal referential acts in relation to the discourse factor, prior mention, and the perceptual factor, joint attention, during early childhood, with the aim of elucidating children’s increasing sensitivity to these discourse-pragmatic factors and their developing communicative ability. The dataset comprised 12 hours of natural conversations between Mandarin-speaking mother–child dyads. Children’s referential choices of the modalities and expressions were analyzed in terms of the two pragmatic factors (i.e., prior mention and joint attention). The results indicate that, from the earliest stage observed, children systematically differentiated newly introduced and previously mentioned referents in the modalities and referential expressions. They provided more information for new referents involved in joint attention via cross-modal referential acts, while relying on verbally informative expressions for new referents when joint attention was absent; conversely, previously mentioned referents were typically expressed with verbally reduced forms and usually without accompanying non-verbal acts. Cross-modal acts consistently served to identify new referents with joint attention in children’s usage across developmental stages and interactional contexts. Taken together, these findings suggest that children’s referential choices in both modalities reflect their emerging communicative and pragmatic abilities. This study advances understanding of Mandarin-speaking children’s multimodal referential ability by demonstrating how they integrate multimodal expressions of reference and how their non-verbal acts evolve alongside speech as they become more linguistically proficient.

ABSTRACT This paper asks a basic but largely neglected question: which behaviors genuinely qualify as instances of joint attention, and why? I argue that the current literature relies on an heterogeneous explanandum: very different behaviors are treated as paradigmatic cases of jointness, without a unified criterion for what makes attention joint rather than merely individual and parallel. I propose an exclusion criterion in the form of a canonical description of joint attention. In an enactivist-phenomenological spirit, I treat joint attention not as a capacity or mental state, but as an episodic phenomenon of social interaction in which subjects engage in a task whose success essentially depends on a specific kind of co-dependent and shared exercise of attention: an interwoven attentional exercise. I first use thought experiments (one-way mirrors, mutual spying and declarative pointing) to argue that attentional co-dependence alone does not warrant invoking ‘jointness’. I then examine real experimental cooperative linguistic scenarios, drawing on Merleau-Pontian reading and Clark and Krych’s Lego® task, to argue that genuine joint attention requires interwoven contributions. I close by distinguishing this proposal from close accounts and sketching a different conception of attentional overtness.

Human eyes are hypothesized to play a critical role in social cognition, but this hypothesis has yet to be tested concretely in naturalistic settings. This study investigated how direct gaze (i.e., looking someone in their eyes) during live interactions contributes to impression formation and subsequent social cognition processes. Participants were invited to interact with confederates acting as impression targets (e.g., four different people, one at a time), rated each target's personality after the interaction, and then completed a gaze-cuing procedure as a measure of joint attention. Our research questions were (1) whether direct gaze occurrence varies as a function of eyes' visibility, (2) whether such variations meaningfully relate to impression accuracy, and (3) whether they additionally modulate subsequent joint attention. Results show that participants mainly looked at the targets' eyes during the interaction, particularly when their eyes were visible. Additionally, direct gaze showed limited abilities to predict impression accuracy but preliminary links with joint attention. Integrating theories and methods from both social cognitive psychology and personality psychology, this research shows the concrete importance of the social information conveyed by eyes in our everyday lives.

Eye-gaze synchrony-the temporal coordination of eye movements between individuals-has been widely studied in dyadic interactions, but its operationalization remains inconsistent and its extension to multi-person settings is methodologically challenging. This proof-of-concept study examines whether eye-gaze synchrony can be captured in a single triadic interaction using mobile eye tracking and proposes a reproducible workflow for doing so. Three participants wore Tobii Pro Glasses 3 during a 7-min spontaneous face-to-face conversation. Independent recordings were synchronized via a router-based setup, and gaze points were re-expressed within a common two-dimensional reference frame anchored by a fiducial marker. To illustrate how different operationalizations can be applied in this context, we compared an event-based approach quantifying discrete occurrences of mutual gaze and joint attention with an index-based approach assessing temporal alignment of gaze signals via Surrogate Synchrony methods. The two approaches yielded different descriptive patterns, suggesting that they may emphasize different features of gaze coordination in this interaction. These results support the technical feasibility of capturing gaze coordination in triadic interactions using mobile eye tracking and underscore the importance of carefully considering how synchrony is operationalized. The proposed workflow provides a foundation that future studies can evaluate and extend across interactions and contexts.

Human social behavior unfolds in complex real-world environments influenced by social and environmental factors, yet reliable markers of social engagement and connection remain elusive. Interpersonal physiological synchrony has been proposed as one such marker, but its occurrence in everyday settings is not well established. To investigate the social and environmental factors that influence physiological synchrony, we continuously measured heart rate (HR), GPS, and acoustic features of the sound environment from 72 participants across three multiday trips to New York City, capturing naturalistic social behavior. Across all three trips, HRs reliably synchronized when participants were in close physical proximity, indicating that shared environmental context was sufficient to elicit synchrony. Synchrony was higher among socially familiar peers, and context dependent, emerging during close-proximity interactions and joint attention to shared stimuli, but not dispersed interactions. It was also modulated by the sound environment. Periods with low-to-moderate sound pressure levels and moderate-to-high signal-to-noise ratios were associated with increased synchrony, while periods with excessive environmental noise were related to reduced levels comparable to noninteractive settings, which may reflect lower levels of joint engagement in noisier environments. These findings demonstrate that interpersonal physiological synchrony emerges in naturalistic social settings and is modulated by physical proximity, social familiarity, social context, and the sound environment, establishing it as a reliable marker of real-world social engagement.

Many autistic children have spoken vocabulary delays that impact communication abilities during critical developmental periods. Behavioral and brain predictors of spoken language development in autism have been independently identified but rarely evaluated simultaneously. Here, we examined how fine motor skills, joint attention, and white matter microstructure of speech-related tracts are associated with spoken vocabulary development in autistic children with a broad range of speech abilities. Spoken vocabulary was assessed longitudinally in 122 autistic children (38% female) first between 2-4 years (Time 1) and again approximately two years later. Children were divided into groups based on their Time 1 spoken vocabularies: larger, average, or smaller. Fifty-eight autistic children (47% of the sample) were in the smaller vocabulary group, which represented both emergent speakers and non-speaking individuals. Within this smaller vocabulary group, faster rates of spoken vocabulary development were associated with better Time 1 fine motor and joint attention skills, and lower Time 1 fractional anisotropy (FA) in the occipital inferior longitudinal fasciculus, central arcuate fasciculus, and inferior corticospinal tract. Rates of spoken vocabulary development were best predicted by models that included both brain and behavior metrics, which each individually explained significant variance and together accounted for roughly half of the model variability. Results suggest that together early childhood fine motor skills, joint attention skills, and white matter microstructure contribute to a developmental cascade supporting spoken language. Findings demonstrate the potential clinical utility of early brain scanning, indicating that microstructure is predictive of language development above and beyond salient behavioral predictors.

Social cognition encompasses various mental abilities and processes through which individuals to understand and engage with others. The Early Social Cognition Inventory (ESCI) assesses skills such as joint attention, imitation, and mental state understanding through parental reports. While the ESCI has shown reliability in English-speaking contexts, this study adapts it for Turkish-speaking children aged 4 to 39 months, focusing on psychometric properties within a non-WEIRD context. In Study 1 (N = 124; Mage = 22.35, SD = 10), factor analysis revealed that, unlike the original two-factor model, the Turkish ESCI followed a one-factor structure. Two items with low factor loading was removed, resulting in a 19-item version with strong internal reliability. Study 2 (N = 122; Mage = 22.20, SD = 10.31) assessed convergent validity, revealing strong correlations between the ESCI scores and the Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers Revised (M-CHAT/R-F). Study 3 (N = 52; Mage = 19.56, SD = 10.36) confirmed test-retest reliability over one month. Finally, Study 4 combined data from Studies 1 and 2 (N = 246; Mage = 22.28, SD = 10.14) to confirm the internal reliability of the ESCI across various demographic groups, demonstrating its suitability across diverse populations. The Turkish ESCI is thus a valid, reliable tool for assessing social cognition in young children, enabling research into individual and cultural differences in non-Western settings.

ABSTRACT This study asks whether filled pauses actively engage attention and whether such engagement influences structural processing, measured through structural alignment. Participants orally described a series of pictures, then listened to a short informational passage and answered questions about it, and then described another series of pictures. Participants completed this twice: The first passage had double-object targets, and the second passage had passive targets. Critically, one of the passages contained filled pauses (before the verb in target sentences), and the other did not. We measured participants’ pupil diameter in target sentences, an index of attention engagement, and pupil size synchrony, an index of moment-to-moment shared attention across observers. For speech with filled pauses compared to without, we found that pupil size was larger overall, peaking after the filled pause appeared, and higher synchrony across listeners. We interpret this as evidence that filled pauses actively engage attention. However, we did not detect a structural alignment effect in any condition, and thus found no evidence for an influence of filled pauses on structural processing (or, in another analysis, comprehension accuracy). These results suggest that filled pauses before the verb attract attention in the moment but do not influence downstream structural processing and general memory for content.

Multimodal behavioral analysis of child play interactions for early detection of Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The rapid integration of digital media into early childhood environments has raised increasing concerns regarding its influence on social and emotional development. An emerging clinical presentation, commonly referred to as virtual autism, describes a constellation of autism-like behaviours observed in young children with a history of excessive early screen exposure and limited caregiver–child interaction. The present study sought to examine the nature and extent of parent–child interaction deficits in children exhibiting features consistent with virtual autism and to investigate the association between early screen exposure and interactional impairments. Using a clinic-based descriptive correlational observational design, the study assessed 32 children aged 4–9 years who presented with autism-like symptoms in the absence of a confirmed classical Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnosis. Parent–child interactions were evaluated through semi-structured developmental interviews, standardised assessment tools, and systematic observational checklists during free-play and guided interaction tasks. The findings revealed marked deficits across multiple domains of interaction, including limited initiation, reduced joint attention, poor eye contact, and diminished emotional attunement. Correlation analysis demonstrated a significant positive association between the duration of early screen exposure and the severity of interactional deficits. Qualitative observations further indicated emerging improvements in social engagement among children whose caregivers reported recent reductions in screen use and increased interactive involvement. These results emphasise the pivotal role of disrupted parent–child interaction in the manifestation of virtual autism and highlight the need for early identification and parent-centred, interaction-focused intervention strategies to support optimal developmental outcomes

Williams syndrome (WS) is a rare neurogenetic condition classically associated with ‘hypersociability’, relative verbal strengths, and marked visuospatial weakness. Despite this phenotype, a subset of children with WS exhibit clinically significant autism spectrum disorder (ASD) features, creating diagnostic ambiguity and risk for under-recognition of co-occurring ASD (‘secondary autism’). We present a case of a 5-year-old boy with genetically confirmed WS and profound developmental delays who was referred for concerns regarding limited reciprocal interaction, sensory sensitivities, and restricted/repetitive behaviors. A comprehensive, multi-method evaluation was completed, including cognitive and adaptive testing (WPPSI–IV; ABAS–3), caregiver interview (ADI–R), and direct autism assessment (ADOS-2, Module 1), alongside standardized behavioral observation. The child demonstrated extremely low cognitive functioning and severely impaired adaptive skills, meeting criteria for intellectual disability. Across ASD-specific measures and clinical observation, he showed clear deficits in social reciprocity and joint attention, minimal functional communication, and prominent repetitive/sensory behaviors, supporting a co-occurring ASD diagnosis. This case underscores the heterogeneity of WS and highlights the clinical importance of systematic ASD assessment in children with known genetic syndromes, as accurate dual diagnosis prevents diagnostic overshadowing and meaningfully informs intervention planning, educational supports, and access to autism-specific services.

A systematic review of surgeon-anesthesiologist relationship in the operating room.

To evaluate the proposed explainable denoising deep learning model, Grouped Shared Convolutional Attention Vision Transformer (GSCAViT), for classifying normal fetal echocardiogram. A retrospective study was conducted on 358 fetal cardiac ultrasound exams with a total of 2501 images. GSCAViT utilized seven echocardiograms and was compared against baseline and enhanced models using metrics including accuracy, precision, recall, F1 score. The SHAP method clarified key image features, and the denoising guided GSCA module was assessed through visual comparisons and image quality metrics. GSCAViT achieved an accuracy of 97.1%, 99.4%, 81.3%, 72.9% on the validation and three test sets. In addition, GSCAViT achieved low error rates of 2.9%, 0.6%, 18.7%, and 27.1%. To improve upon existing Vision Transformer based models and denoising modules, we propose the GSCAViT, which integrates a novel denoising-guided GSCA module for enhanced image quality and interpretability. SHAP visualizations confirmed the model's ability to identify critical cardiac structures, while the denoising module enhanced image quality, yielding the highest contrast-to-noise ratioand peak signal-to-noise ratio values. GSCAViT outperformed baseline and several enhanced models in classifying seven types of normal fetal echocardiograms, SHAP visualization enhanced the interpretability of classification, comparisons of visual effectiveness and image parameters confirmed the efficacy of the GSCA module.

Accurate aboveground biomass estimation with quantified uncertainty is essential for precision agriculture, enabling risk-aware decision-making and strategic model improvement. Existing approaches predominantly provide point estimates without uncertainty quantification, limiting their operational utility for trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (AI) deployment. This study presents a Multi-modal Attention-based Uncertainty Quantification Network (MA-UQNet), which achieves superior prediction accuracy (R 2 = 0.856) with well-calibrated uncertainty (97.18% coverage) for wheat aboveground biomass estimation through integrated multi-modal attention, growth stage-specific processing, and epistemic–aleatoric uncertainty decomposition. The framework integrates hyperspectral remote sensing with environmental variables via joint attention mechanisms that adapt to phenological variations. Model development employed a decade-spanning dataset (2012–2022, 1272 samples) collected under factorial combinations of nitrogen rates (0–270 kg/ha), irrigation levels (0–384 mm), and wheat cultivars across four growth stages. Temporal extrapolation validation using chronological partitioning (2012–2019 for training and 2020–2021 for testing) demonstrated robust generalization, substantially outperforming Random Forest (R 2 = 0.751, coverage = 76.61%) and nine representative baselines, including Bayesian Neural Networks (R 2 = 0.805, coverage = 38.31%). Uncertainty decomposition revealed epistemic uncertainty to be moderately dominant (53%) relative to aleatoric uncertainty (47%), indicating that strategic data collection offers greater potential for uncertainty reduction than improving measurement precision alone. These findings provide validated tools for uncertainty-aware biomass estimation in precision agriculture. • A multi-modal uncertainty quantification network is proposed for wheat biomass estimation. • Integrating hyperspectral and environmental data outperforms single-source approaches. • Epistemic uncertainty moderately dominates aleatoric uncertainty. • Well-calibrated uncertainty estimates enable reliable decision-making in precision agriculture.

This study examined factors related to three language profiles (i.e., expressive dominance [ED], receptive dominance [RD], and non-dominance [ND]), among children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), other developmental delays (DD), and a sample of controls from the general population (POP). Data were from the Study to Explore Early Development (SEED), a multi-site, US-based, case-control study of correlates of ASD among 2.5-to-5-year-olds (N = 4905). We examined factors associated with language dominance using multinomial regression models to estimate odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals. Across all groups, children had the greatest odds of an ND language profile, but ED and RD profiles were relatively more common in ASD versus DD and POP. Autistic children had greater odds of: (a) ED if they demonstrated lower developmental levels (i.e., younger age, lower nonverbal cognition, limited imaginative play, or below average fine motor) or had more severe characteristics of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or autism across both social interaction and restricted and repetitive behaviors; and (b) RD if they performed at higher developmental levels (i.e., older age or above average fine motor), but also demonstrated limited initiations of joint attention or limited imaginative play. Autistic children had lower odds of ND at older ages, in contrast with DD and POP, who had greater odds of ND at older ages. This study extended findings showing that, although an ND profile is most common across groups, ED and RD profiles occur relatively more frequently among autistic children. These findings have implications for differential diagnosis and intervention targets.

Phelan-McDermid syndrome (PMS) is caused in the majority of cases by the loss or mutation of one allele of the SHANK3 gene, located in human chr 22q13.33. PMS displays large interindividual differences in clinical severity and longitudinal trajectory. Other genes located in this chromosomal region are known to contribute to the clinical phenotype (CELSR1, TCF20) in patients with larger deletions. The aim of this study is to identify clinically-relevant phenotypic features significantly influenced by the size of chromosome 22q terminal deletion and to identify new potential candidate genes likely to be involved in these phenotypic effects. Genotype-phenotype correlations were investigated in 63 PMS patients directly ascertained by deep clinical phenotyping and determination of deletion size (Agilent CGH-array 180K or 400K). Patients were partitioned into eleven categories, based on deletion size (Mb). Phenotypic variables significantly influenced by deletion size were initially detected by exact χ2 (10,000 iterations) and Kendall's Tau. Candidate genes were then sought using: (a) ROC curves for binary dichotomous variables; (b) best separation threshold for quantitative variables. Phenotypic variables significantly associated with chromosome 22q deletion size in our sample include: expressive language (p < 0.001); motor development timing (p < 0.001); gait (p < 0.001); muscle strength (p < 0.01); social cognition, encompassing eye contact, exchange gesture, and joint attention (p < 0.001-< 0.05); infectious diseases coincident with the onset of behavioral manifestations (p < 0.001); brain structural abnormalities on MRI (p < 0.001); dysmorphisms (p < 0.001); renal and urinary malformations (p < 0.01); comorbid lifelong bipolar disorder (p < 0.05). The best separation thresholds for many of these variables were located within or nearby genes playing important morphogenetic (PLXNB2, TAFA5) or neurodevelopmental roles (BRD1, TBC1D22A, ATXN10 and/or FBLN1). For renal malformations, the two best thresholds point toward one long non-coding RNA and a cluster of antisense RNAs. The genes identified in this study appear as strong candidates to contribute to the PMS phenotype, by conferring an additional layer of abnormal neurodevelopment and impaired morphogenesis to the disruptive effects produced by SHANK3 haploinsufficiency.