Conceptualizing Social Attention in Developmental Research.

ABSTRACT: The term social attention has become widely used during the last decade, appearing within behavioral neuroscience and developmental neurocognitive literatures to characterize a variety of activities and cognitive processes that emerge in the presence of conspecifics. We provide here an overview of the current status of social attention as a construct, as reflected in its appearance in research studies, and we offer a framework for characterizing the extant literature based on the functions of social attention processes: as behavior for social communication, as motivation to engage in social communication, and as a form of basic visual attention in the context of other social agents. We then provide two overarching questions to guide future research efforts directed toward establishing the

SUBMITTER: Salley B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5082429 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature