The Development of Gaze Following in a Third-Party Context

Infants follow the gaze of an individual with whom they are directly interacting by the end of the first year. By 18 months infants are capable of learning novel words in observational (or third-party) contexts (Floor & Akhtar, 2006). To examine third-party gaze following in 12- and 18-month-olds, the parent and experimenter engaged in a conversation while the infant was present. For 8 trials approximately every 30 sec the experimenter would turn her head to the right or left to fixate on a toy placed on either side of the room with the parent following suit. In the first experiment, the parent was seated next to the infant and the experimenter opposite, whereas in the second experiment the positions of the adults were switched. In Experiment 1, 18-month-olds but not 12-month-olds followed gaze. In Experiment 2, 12-month-olds acquired a tendency to follow gaze during the experimental session. These results suggest that an incipient ability to follow third-party gaze is present by 12 months and that infants acquire a more reliable and general ability to follow the gaze of noninteractive others between 12 and 18 months.