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Observing Others' Gaze Direction Affects Infants' Preference for Looking at Gazing- or Gazed-at Faces
Mitsuhiko Ishikawa1, Shoji Itakura1
1Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan.
Insights
Infants prefer faces that look away from them, but are drawn to faces that look at others. This suggests 10-month-olds interpret adult gaze cues and adjust their own attention.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Social Neuroscience
- Infant Cognition
Background:
- Eye gaze is crucial for social interaction and understanding attention.
- Joint attention (JA) research typically focuses on gaze toward objects, not other people.
- Infants observe social gaze directed at both objects and individuals.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how eye gaze directed toward another face influences infant face preferences.
- To examine infant responses to gaze cues in joint attention (JA) and no-JA situations.
- To determine if infants interpret adult gaze behavior.
Main Methods:
- 19 infants were observed in JA and no-JA conditions.
- In JA, a central face gazed at a lateral face; in no-JA, gaze shifted away.
- Infant looking times at central and lateral faces were measured in preferential looking tests.
Main Results:
- Infants looked longer at central faces in the no-JA condition.
- Infants looked longer at lateral faces in the JA condition.
- Adult gaze direction significantly biased infant looking duration.
Conclusions:
- 10-month-old infants appear to interpret adult gaze behavior.
- Adult gaze cues can influence and direct infant attention.
- This study highlights the early development of social gaze interpretation in infants.
Abstract:
Eye gaze is an important signal in social interactions, and it plays an important role to understand what others looking in joint attention (JA) situations. JA has been examined in situations involving two people gazing at objects; however, ecologically, infants observe not only faces that gaze at objects but also those that gaze at other people. Here, we examined how eye gaze directed toward another face affect face preferences in infants. A total of 19 children were observed during a JA situation and a no-JA situation. In the JA situation, an adult face in the central position of the screen shifted her gaze to look at another adult face at a lateral position on the screen. However, during the no JA situation, the central face shifted her eye gaze away from the adult face presented on the screen. At test, for the centrally presented faces, infant looking times were longer at faces in the no JA condition. At test, for the laterally presented faces, looking times were longer at the faces in the JA condition. Thus, the adult's eye gaze biased the duration of the gaze of the infants at either the central faces or the lateral-cued faces in the preferential looking tests. These results suggest that 10-month-old infants may interpret adult gazing behavior and that this can affect the gazing behavior of infants.