Prior social feedback creates residual differences in infant attention

For human infants, attention is a crucial skill that both facilitates and constrains learning, with individual differences predicting cognitive development. Traditionally, early attention differences were posited to arise from predetermined non-social mechanisms. However, given human infants' altriciality and extended dependence on carers, persistent attention differences may also be affected by early social feedback. Here, we experimentally tested social influences on early attention by manipulating the form and timing of social interactions, then assessing infant attention in a subsequent behavioural vigilance task. Eighty infants aged 6-7 months interacted with an experimenter who responded to infants' looks and vocalizations using one of four response schedules, varying in contingency (rate of responding to infant behaviour) and joint focus (response congruency with infants' attention). Infants then completed the vigilance task with a new adult. We found that experimenters' prior contingency predicted infants' later attention. When rarely responded to, infants subsequently showed higher vigilance (frequent visual scanning and shorter response latencies) than infants who received high response rates. Furthermore, highly vigilant infants attended more rigidly to highly salient stimuli across task trials. Our findings provide strong experimental evidence that contingent social feedback causally organizes infant attention in later settings, suggesting possible mechanisms for interventions supporting adaptive outcomes. This article is part of the theme issue 'Mechanisms of learning from social interaction'.