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Updated: Jun 2, 2026

Gaze in Action: Head-mounted Eye Tracking of Children's Dynamic Visual Attention During Naturalistic Behavior
Published on: November 14, 2018
Cues for early social skills: direct gaze modulates newborns' recognition of talking faces
Bahia Guellai1, Arlette Streri
1René Descartes University (Paris, France) Laboratory for Psychology of Perception, Unité Mixte de Recherche Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique 8158, Centre Biomédical des Saints-Pères, Paris, France. bahia.guellai@gmail.com
Abstract:
Previous studies showed that, from birth, speech and eye gaze are two important cues in guiding early face processing and social cognition. These studies tested the role of each cue independently; however, infants normally perceive speech and eye gaze together. Using a familiarization-test procedure, we first familiarized newborn infants (n = 24) with videos of unfamiliar talking faces with either direct gaze or averted gaze. Newborns were then tested with photographs of the previously seen face and of a new one. The newborns looked longer at the face that previously talked to them, but only in the direct gaze condition. These results highlight the importance of both speech and eye gaze as socio-communicative cues by which infants identify others. They suggest that gaze and infant-directed speech, experienced together, are powerful cues for the development of early social skills.
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