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Updated: Aug 20, 2026

Gaze in Action: Head-mounted Eye Tracking of Children's Dynamic Visual Attention During Naturalistic Behavior
Published on: November 14, 2018
Twelve-month-olds point to share attention and interest
Ulf Liszkowski1, Malinda Carpenter, Anne Henning
1Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany. liszkowski@eva.mpg.de
Abstract:
Infants point for various motives. Classically, one such motive is declarative, to share attention and interest with adults to events. Recently, some researchers have questioned whether infants have this motivation. In the current study, an adult reacted to 12-month-olds' pointing in different ways, and infants' responses were observed. Results showed that when the adult shared attention and interest (i.e alternated gaze and emoted), infants pointed more frequently across trials and tended to prolong each point--presumably to prolong the satisfying interaction. However, when the adult emoted to the infant alone or looked only to the event, infants pointed less across trials and repeated points more within trials--presumably in an attempt to establish joint attention. Results suggest that 12-month-olds point declaratively and understand that others have psychological states that can be directed and shared.
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