29/01/2026
I am doing research on joint attention, which occurs when two or more people are looking at the same thing. This is very important in child development. Usually by the age of about 1, children became aware of looking at the same thing as someone else, which is why children or adults with them point at things and say what it is, like "Dog”. I am trying to find out if people can tell when someone else is looking at the same object, for example an apple, even if they cannot see the other person, as in the diagram. The object can, for example, be placed in an open doorway, with the looker and guesser separated by a wall. In a series of randomised trials, each lasting about 10 seconds, the looker either looks or does not look at the object, and the guesser says whether they think it is being looked at or not.
This is all made easy to do using an app on mobile phones. I am setting up a research group, the Joint Attention Research Group, which is being coordinated by my research assistant Georgia Black, to do research on this phenomenon, and to find out if people can get better at detecting when someone else is looking at the same object with practice. If you have another person you can do this with, like a friend or family member, and would like to take part in this research, please get in touch with Georgia for further details. You can contact her here Georgia Black or email her at jointattention.research@gmail.com
