1-130 - Social Attention and Gaze-Following: Factors that Impact Attention and Learning

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Adults often direct young children’s attention toward important objects and events in the environment with eye gaze and head turns. This process is critical for object processing, language learning, and binding non-linguistic sights and sounds. While we have a general understanding of the typical development of gaze following, we still do not fully know under what circumstances following eye gaze is enhanced or hindered. We also lack an in-depth understanding of how following another’s direction of attention relates to learning. A comprehensive investigation of gaze following is needed in order to outline the typical developmental trajectory of this process and to obtain a fuller picture of the circumstances that facilitate learning in the first years of life.

The current symposium focuses on gaze-following behavior in young children and the different factors that impact this behavior as well as the learning that results from following another’s gaze. Each speaker has unique data examining features that impact gaze following and learning. The first presentation will explore the manners in which infants follow the head turn of their mothers compared to strangers and how gaze following relates to word learning in this task. The second presentation examines how children use social cues and salience cues when learning words. The third presentation uses eye-tracking to compare how infants selectively follow the gaze of reliable and unreliable faces. The final presentation will pertain to the influence of nonsocial cues on infant’s object processing using event-related potentials and eye tracking.

Sub Unit

• Social Cognition

Chairs

• Ryan Barry, University of California, Davis

• Susan M Rivera, Univ of California, Davis

Individual Presentations

• Mothers and Strangers: The Influence of Familiarity on Gaze Following and Label Learning - Presenting Author: Ryan Barry, University of California, Davis; Rebecca Shields, UC Davis; Katharine M. Graf Estes, University of California, Davis; Susan M Rivera, Univ of California, Davis

• Salience and Social Cues in Early Word Learning - Presenting Author: Daniel Yurovsky, Stanford University; Michael C. Frank, Stanford University

• Selective Gaze Following Across the First Postnatal Year - Presenting Author: Kristen Swan Tummeltshammer, Birkbeck College; David M Sobel, Brown University; Natasha Zoe Kirkham, Stanford University

• Eyes Matter – How Nonsocial Motion Cues Influence Infants’ Object Processing on the Neurophysiological and the Behavioral Level - Presenting Author: Christine Michel, Universität Heidelberg; Caroline Wronski, University of Zürich; Sabina M Pauen, University of Illinois; Moritz M Daum, University of Zürich; Stefanie Hoehl, Universität Heidelberg