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

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Infants are biased to attend to faces from birth. Focusing on the eyes is critical for recognizing faces, identifying emotions, and learning about socially relevant information. Infants’ ability to follow the direction of another’s attention via gaze cueing or gaze following is a foundational social cognitive skill that is critical for later development.

Although it is understood that attending to the eyes is essential for early development, less is known about factors that influence infants’ attention to the eyes and sensitivity to eye gaze direction. This symposium integrates research examining multiple factors that modulate infants’ attention to the eyes, including perceptual features of the eyes (Paper 1), facial expressions of emotion (Paper 2), Fragile X syndrome diagnosis (Paper 3), and deafness (Paper 4). We will convene an international group of researchers who use multiple paradigms (i.e., reinforcement learning, gaze cueing with static and dynamic faces, and live gaze following) to assess perceptual, biological, emotional, and social factors that affect attention to the eyes over the first two years of life. We will begin by discussing data that highlight early biases to attend to the eyes (Paper 1), as well as social-contextual factors that may modulate these attention biases (Paper 2). Finally, we will consider the implications of clinical conditions, including cases that both reduce and increase sensitivity to gaze cues and gaze following (Papers 3,4). This symposium thus provides a comprehensive view of the multiple developmental contexts that shape this critical early attention bias to the eyes.

Sub Unit

• Social Cognition

Chairs

• Claire Frances Noonan, Tulane University

• Julie Markant, Tulane University

Individual Presentations

• Infants learn to follow an object’s motion with their gaze – if it features eyes - Presenting Author: Stefanie Hoehl, University of Vienna; Non-Presenting Author: Sabina Maria Pauen, Heidelberg University; Non-Presenting Author: Christine Michel, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences

• Approving infant-directed messages enhance gaze cueing in six-month-old infants - Presenting Author: Claire Frances Noonan, Tulane University; Non-Presenting Author: Julie Markant, Tulane University

• Emotionally gaze-cued object processing in infants with fragile X syndrome - Presenting Author: Ryan Barry-Anwar, University of Florida; Non-Presenting Author: Jessica L. Burris, Rutgers University; Non-Presenting Author: Susan M Rivera, University of California, Davis

• Gaze following is advanced in deaf infants of deaf parents - Presenting Author: Rechele Brooks, University of Washington; Non-Presenting Author: Jenny Singleton, University of Texas at Austin; Non-Presenting Author: Andrew Meltzoff, University of Washington