Gaze following is advanced in deaf infants of deaf parents

• In Event: 3-127 - Gaze Following in Infancy: Contextual Influences and Developmental Implications

Integrative Statement

Following the eye gaze of other people is crucial for preverbal social understanding. Hearing infants begin to gaze follow early in development. Gaze following strongly predicts language development for hearing infants who are typically or atypically developing (e.g., autism spectrum disorders, Mundy 2016).

Gaze following in deaf infants has not been studied, but it is of interest for both theoretical and practical reasons. Past work has shown that experimentally manipulating the visual experiences of hearing infants influences gaze following (Meltzoff & Brooks, 2008). Deaf infants have daily experiences that may affect their processing and understanding of visual cues, much as deaf adults have a heightened sensitivity to peripherally presented information (Dye, Hauser, & Bavelier, 2009). Previous observational studies suggest that deaf parents’ visual language communication and attention-directing strategies improve their deaf infants’ social engagement (Corina & Singleton, 2009; Harris et al., 1989; Spencer, 1992).

The current work tested infants in an experimentally controlled test of gaze following. There were 72 participants: 12 deaf infants of deaf parents and 60 gender- and age-matched hearing infants of hearing parents. All deaf infants had exposure to American Sign Language from birth; all of the controls had exposure to spoken languages from birth. The infants’ age range was 7.8 months to 20.1 months; importantly, age and gender matching was done at the participant level, such that controls were age-matched to be within 7 days of the deaf infants. To test gaze following, an adult silently looked at one of two targets placed distally on the left and the right. A coder, who was kept uninformed to group, scored infant behavior from video recordings of the four test trials. Gaze following was scored for whether an infant looked at the target after the adult did so (“standard gaze following score”) and also whether the infant gaze followed and then also looked directly back to the adult’s face (“enhanced gaze following”).

The results showed that, with age controlled, deaf infants had significantly higher gaze-following scores than hearing infants (Figure 1): both for standard gaze following, F(1, 69) = 6.76, p = .011, and enhanced gaze following, F(1, 69) = 7.45, p = .008.

These findings support the hypothesis of acceleration of gaze following among deaf infants. This significant difference for enhanced gaze following suggests that deaf infants are not only following eye gaze but also checking back to the adult for further information (e.g., affect, linguistic signs) about the target object. The larger implication is that gaze-following behavior is acquired and malleable and that infants’ daily experiences influence aspects of gaze following in young children. The findings reveal an interesting acceleration/compensation rather than deficit in this population. Because the attention of deaf infants is not directed via sound, as it can be in hearing infants, deaf infants may learn to rely on visual cues, especially eye gaze, as cues to interesting things in the environment, demonstrating adaptive developmental plasticity.

Authors

• Rechele Brooks, University of Washington
  Presenting Author

• Jenny Singleton, University of Texas at Austin
  Non-Presenting Author

• Andrew Meltzoff, University of Washington
  Non-Presenting Author