Dynamics of Caregiver Unpredictability Direct Moment-to-Moment Shifts in Infant Attention

Infant cognitive development is related to how predictable a caregiver is, but themechanism driving this relationship is unclear. Here, we show that natural variation in caregiverpredictability during caregiver-infant interactions shapes infants’ burgeoning attention. Caregiver-infant dyads (N=222, 2-6-months-old) in South Africa and Malawi engaged in naturalistic playbefore we hand-annotated their interactions to measure caregiver predictability and infantattention. Variation in the predictability of caregiver behavior shaped the temporal dynamics ofinfant attention—infants attended to the particular sensory signals, and at the moments in time thatwere useful for their learning based on their own caregiver’s typical behavior. These resultsgeneralized across both African countries, suggesting that the effects reflect a species-relevant,rather than culture-specific, developmental process. These findings thus provide a culturally-agnostic framework by which experience shapes infant attention, an early developing precursorfor cognitive and mental health.