Understanding the referential nature of looking: Infants’ preference for object-directed gaze

In four experiments, we investigated whether 9-month-old infants are sensitive to the relationship between gaze direction and object location and whether this sensitivity depends on the presence of communicative cues like eye contact. Infants observed a face, which repeatedly shifted its eyes either toward, or away from, unpredictably appearing objects. We found that they looked longer at the face when the gaze shifts were congruent with the location of the object. A second experiment ruled out that this effect was simply due to spatial congruency, while a third and a fourth experiment revealed that a preceding period of eye contact is required to elicit the gaze-object congruency effect. These results indicate that infants at this age can encode eye direction in referential terms in the presence of communication cues and are biased to attend to scenes with object-directed gaze.

[1]  Mark H. Johnson,et al.  Gaze Following in Newborns , 2004 .

[2]  G. Csibra,et al.  Goal attribution without agency cues: the perception of ‘pure reason’ in infancy , 1999, Cognition.

[3]  D. L. Mumme,et al.  The infant as onlooker: learning from emotional reactions observed in a television scenario. , 2003, Child development.

[4]  G. McCarthy,et al.  Neural basis of eye gaze processing deficits in autism. , 2005, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[5]  Mark H. Johnson,et al.  The development and neural basis of referential gaze perception , 2006, Social neuroscience.

[6]  Dare A. Baldwin,et al.  Infants' contribution to the achievement of joint reference. , 1991, Child development.

[7]  H. Furth.  Object permanence in five-month-old infants. , 1987, Cognition.

[8]  Mark H. Johnson,et al.  Direct gaze modulates face recognition in young infants , 2007, Cognition.

[9]  Z. Nadasdy,et al.  Taking the intentional stance at 12 months of age , 1995, Cognition.

[10]  C. Frith,et al.  Social interaction modifies neural response to gaze shifts. , 2007, Social cognitive and affective neuroscience.

[11]  A. Meltzoff,et al.  The importance of eyes: how infants interpret adult looking behavior. , 2002, Developmental psychology.

[12]  G. Csibra,et al.  Social learning and social cognition: The case for pedagogy , 2006 .

[13]  D. Povinelli,et al.  Mindblindness. An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind Simon Baron-Cohen 1995 , 1996, Trends in Neurosciences.

[14]  T. Allison,et al.  Brain activation evoked by perception of gaze shifts: the influence of context , 2003, Neuropsychologia.

[15]  Mark H. Johnson,et al.  Infants perceiving and acting on the eyes: tests of an evolutionary hypothesis. , 2003, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[16]  K. Jellinger.  Processes of Change in Brain and Cognitive Development Attention and Performance XXI , 2007 .

[17]  Toshikazu Hasegawa,et al.  Reflexive orienting in response to eye gaze and an arrow in children with and without autism. , 2004, Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines.

[18]  C. Kleinke.  Gaze and eye contact: a research review. , 1986, Psychological bulletin.

[19]  Mark H. Johnson,et al.  Processes of change in brain and cognitive development , 2005, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[20]  Mark H. Johnson,et al.  Infants' use of gaze direction to cue attention: The importance of perceived motion , 2000 .

[21]  A. Kingstone,et al.  Are eyes special? It depends on how you look at it , 2002, Psychonomic bulletin & review.

[22]  A. Meltzoff,et al.  The development of gaze following and its relation to language. , 2005, Developmental science.

[23]  Michael I. Posner,et al.  Facilitation of Saccades Toward a Covertly Attended Location in Early Infancy , 1994 .

[24]  Amanda L. Woodward,et al.  Infants’ developing understanding of the link between looker and object , 2003 .

[25]  Yuyan Luo,et al.  The attribution of attention: 9-month-olds' interpretation of gaze as goal-directed action. , 2007, Developmental science.

[26]  G. Butterworth,et al.  What minds have in common is space : Spatial mechanisms serving joint visual attention in infancy , 1991 .

[27]  Chris Moore,et al.  Infant gaze following based on eye direction , 1998 .

[28]  C. Moore,et al.  Development of joint visual attention in infants , 1995 .

[29]  Agnes Volein,et al.  Infants can infer the presence of hidden objects from referential gaze information , 2008 .

[30]  Jon Driver,et al.  Adult's eyes trigger shifts of visual attention in human infants , 1998 .

[31]  C. Moore,et al.  Joint attention : its origins and role in development , 1995 .

[32]  M. Johnson,et al.  The development and temporal dynamics of spatial orienting in infants. , 1996, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[33]  M. Tomasello,et al.  Reliance on head versus eyes in the gaze following of great apes and human infants: the cooperative eye hypothesis. , 2007, Journal of human evolution.

[34]  Mark H. Johnson,et al.  Gaze detection and the cortical processing of faces: Evidence from infants and adults , 1995 .

[35]  C. Moore,et al.  Social Understanding at the End of the First Year of Life , 1994 .

[36]  Mark H. Johnson,et al.  Eye contact detection in humans from birth , 2002, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[37]  Rechele Brooks,et al.  Gaze following at 12 and 14 months: Do the eyes matter? , 2002 .