Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 21, 2026
Gaze in Action: Head-mounted Eye Tracking of Children's Dynamic Visual Attention During Naturalistic Behavior
Published on: November 14, 2018
Action type and goal type modulate goal-directed gaze shifts in 14-month-old infants
Gustaf Gredebäck1, Dorota Stasiewicz, Terje Falck-Ytter
1Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway. gustaf.gredeback@psykologii.uio.no
Insights
Fourteen-month-old infants anticipate action goals, unlike 10-month-olds. This developmental shift in infant gaze tracking shows infants understand object displacement and containment actions.
Area of Science:
- Developmental psychology
- Cognitive neuroscience
- Infant perception
Background:
- Infants' understanding of goal-directed actions is crucial for cognitive development.
- Previous research indicates varying levels of action understanding in infants based on age.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how 10- and 14-month-old infants' gaze patterns change when observing different hand actions and goals.
- To determine if infants can anticipate the goal of an action or merely react to it.
Main Methods:
- Recorded infant gaze using eye-tracking technology while they watched videos of hand actions.
- Infants observed actions involving object displacement, containment within containers, and fisted hand movements.
- Analyzed anticipatory versus reactive gaze shifts in relation to action type and goal.
Main Results:
- Fourteen-month-olds, but not 10-month-olds, showed anticipatory gaze shifts towards action goals.
- Infants demonstrated more anticipatory gaze during containment actions compared to displacement actions.
- Fourteen-month-olds differentiated gaze patterns based on whether the goal was displacement or containment.
Conclusions:
- Action type and goal complexity influence the timing of goal-directed gaze shifts in infants.
- A developmental progression in understanding goal-directed actions is evident between 10 and 14 months of age.
- Infants' ability to predict action outcomes improves with age and depends on the specific action context.
Abstract:
Ten- and 14-month-old infants' gaze was recorded as the infants observed videos of different hand actions directed toward multiple goals. Infants observed an actor who (a) reached for objects and displaced them, (b) reached for objects and placed them inside containers, or (c) moved his fisted hand. Fourteen-month-olds, but not 10-month-olds, anticipated the goal of reaching actions but tracked all the other actions reactively. Fourteen-month-olds also produced more anticipatory gaze shifts during containment compared with displacement and differentiated between reaching actions dependent on whether the overall goal was to displace objects or place objects inside containers. These results demonstrate that action type and goal type modulate the latency of goal-directed gaze shifts in infants.
