Related Experiment Video
Updated: Mar 10, 2026
Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm
Published on: May 15, 2019
Six-month-old infant long sleepers prefer a human face
Wanqi Sun1, Guanghai Wang2, Yanrui Jiang2
1Shanghai Children's Medical Center, Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine, MOE-Shanghai Key Laboratory of Children's Environmental Health, Shanghai, China; Department of Psychology, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
Background:
Sleep is known to influence socio-emotional regulation among children and preschoolers, whereas little is known about the association between sleep and social preference during infancy.
Methods:
In the current study, habitual sleep of 49 infants aged around six months old were surveyed by questionnaire, and their social preference was revealed by their preferential gaze in three conditions: (1) a human face paired with an object (ie, a cup), (2) a human face paired with an animal face (ie, a dog), and (3) a dog face paired with a cup.
Results:
In general, images with richer social information (ie, a human face and dog) attracted infants' gaze significantly more than nonsocial images (ie, cup). Infants with shorter sleep duration (ie, <13 h a day) show a significant reduction in their preference toward a human face when paired with a dog than infants with longer sleep duration.
Conclusions:
Our findings suggest an early positive link between sleep duration and preference towards socially rich stimuli (eg, a human face) during infancy.
