Joint attention and linguistic reference in interactive contexts with a cartoon

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the relationship between child and cartoon trying to comprehend how the process of joint attention is established in interaction with the television structure of the cartoon. The data selected are qualitative one involving the filming of a mother-child dyad (three to four years old) watching to the Spanish cartoon Pocoyo, animation addressed at preschoolers. In this paper the notion of joint attention is understood as a process which provides the acquisition and the consolidation of the linguistic reference for a three year-old child, who is already inserted into language. This notion lies in the fact that joint attention is a process which emerge in the child routine around his ninth month, and, around the fifteenth month, it is already consolidated. Results show that in the interactive context with the cartoon, the scenes of joint attention are constituted into three different formats which give support to the consolidation of linguistic reference.