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Updated: Mar 23, 2026
Author Spotlight: An Automated Method for Assessing Visual Acuity in Infants and Toddlers Using an Eye-Tracking System
Published on: March 17, 2023
From faces to hands: Changing visual input in the first two years
Caitlin M Fausey1, Swapnaa Jayaraman2, Linda B Smith2
1Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403, United States.
Insights
Infants see faces more often early in development, followed by increased visual input of hands interacting with objects. This shift highlights developmental changes in social visual experiences.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Human Perception
Background:
- Human development is intrinsically linked to social context.
- Faces and hands are primary sources of social information for infants.
- Understanding visual input during early development is crucial for cognitive and social growth.
Purpose of the Study:
- To quantify the visual frequency of faces and hands in infants' everyday environments.
- To investigate the developmental trajectory of face and hand visual input from 1 to 24 months.
- To explore the relationship between face and hand visual experiences and object interaction.
Main Methods:
- Collected 143 hours of infant-perspective video data using head-mounted cameras.
- Analyzed scenes from 34 infants aged 1 month to 2 years.
- Sampled video data at 1/5 Hz to assess visual frequency and co-occurrence.
Main Results:
- A distinct developmental shift was observed: earlier dense face input followed by later dense hand input.
- Hands were predominantly seen in contact with objects across all ages.
- The co-occurrence of hands and faces was higher than statistically expected.
Conclusions:
- The observed shift from face to hand visual input suggests a principled transition in infant visual experience.
- This transition may be influenced by developmental "gates" that regulate the timing and statistics of visual input.
- Findings provide insights into how early visual experiences shape social-cognitive development.
Abstract:
Human development takes place in a social context. Two pervasive sources of social information are faces and hands. Here, we provide the first report of the visual frequency of faces and hands in the everyday scenes available to infants. These scenes were collected by having infants wear head cameras during unconstrained everyday activities. Our corpus of 143hours of infant-perspective scenes, collected from 34 infants aged 1month to 2years, was sampled for analysis at 1/5Hz. The major finding from this corpus is that the faces and hands of social partners are not equally available throughout the first two years of life. Instead, there is an earlier period of dense face input and a later period of dense hand input. At all ages, hands in these scenes were primarily in contact with objects and the spatio-temporal co-occurrence of hands and faces was greater than expected by chance. The orderliness of the shift from faces to hands suggests a principled transition in the contents of visual experiences and is discussed in terms of the role of developmental gates on the timing and statistics of visual experiences.
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