Head turning is an effective cue for gaze following (original) (raw)
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The development of gaze following and its relation to language
We examined the ontogeny of gaze following by testing infants at 9, 10 and 11 months of age. Infants (N = 96) watched as an adult turned her head toward a target with either open or closed eyes. The 10-and 11-month-olds followed adult turns significantly more often in the open-eyes than the closed-eyes condition, but the 9-month-olds did not respond differentially. Although 9-montholds may view others as 'body orienters', older infants begin to register whether others are 'visually connected' to the external world and, hence, understand adult looking in a new way. Results also showed a strong positive correlation between gaze-following behavior at 10-11 months and subsequent language scores at 18 months. Implications for social cognition are discussed in light of the developmental shift in gaze following between 9 and 11 months of age.
Using gaze direction to learn words at 18 months: Relationships with later vocabulary
There is a well-documented relationship between an infant's early ability to follow the gaze of an adult and their later receptive and expressive language. However, what is less well known is the degree to which a child's ability to learn new words through gaze following predicts later vocabulary knowledge. The current study explored this question by giving 18-month-old infants a word-learning task that required them to follow the gaze of a speaker in order to determine the referent of a novel word. Vocabulary measures were also taken when children were 18, 24 and 30 months old. Results showed that infants' scores on the word-learning task at 18 months were significantly related to their receptive and expressive vocabulary scores both concurrently and longitudinally. These results suggest that the ability to follow gaze direction to identify unfamiliar words' meanings is one of the key strategies used by infants to build their vocabulary.
2008
We found that infant gaze following and pointing predicts subsequent language development. At ages 0 ; 10 or 0 ; 11, infants saw an adult turn to look at an object in an experimental setting. Productive vocabulary was assessed longitudinally through two years of age. Growth curve modeling showed that infants who gaze followed and looked longer at the target object had significantly faster vocabulary growth than infants with shorter looks, even with maternal education controlled; adding infant pointing strengthened the model. We highlight the role of social cognition in word learning and emphasize the communicative-referential functions of early gaze following and pointing.(Received June 06 2006)(Revised February 06 2007)
Gaze Following, Gaze Reading, and Word Learning in Children at Risk for Autism
Child Development, 2012
The BASIS Team* This study investigated gaze-following abilities as a prerequisite for word learning, in a population expected to manifest a wide range of social and communicative skills-children with a family history of autism. Fiftythree 3-year-olds with or without a family history of autism took part in a televised word-learning task. Using an eye-tracker to monitor children's gaze behavior, it was shown that the ability to follow gaze was necessary but not sufficient for successful word learning. Those children who had poor social and communicative skills followed gaze to the labeled object but did not then learn the associated word. These findings shed light on the conditions that lead to successful word learning in typical and atypical populations.
The Development of Gaze Following
Child Development Perspectives, 2008
Gaze following is a fundamental component of object-focused social interaction that researchers have studied as a manifestation of early psychological understanding. This article reviews recent research on manipulations of gaze cues, target salience, spatial layout, and social-interactive context. The development of gaze following through infancy is a dynamic system that should be studied using a combination of empirical and modeling approaches.
Using Eye Direction Cues for Gaze Following - A Developmental Model
2006
We present a reinforcement learning model of gaze following that learns to incorporate eye cues in a developmental trajectory similar to that found in infants: older infants follow gaze more frequently when both the caregiver's eyes and head are turned than when only her head is turned. Similarly, infants learn to follow gaze less when the caregiver's eyes are closed than when her eyes are open. The model works through the maximization of visual reward, and not by representing an estimate of the other person's attentional state, as would be expected by adherents of a mentalist interpretation of gaze following. Within the debate about the age of onset in the use of eye cues for gaze following, we hypothesize that eye cues have an effect as soon as the infant learns to follow gaze, but at first it might be small and therefore difficult to measure. Finally, we propose this learning approach for modeling other aspects of theory of mind.
A unified account of gaze-following.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON AUTONOMOUS MENTAL DEVELOPMENT,
Gaze following, the ability to redirect one’s visual at- tention to look at what another person is seeing, is foundational for imitation, word learning, and theory-of-mind. Previous theories have suggested that the development of gaze following in human infants is the product of a basic gaze following mechanism, plus the gradual incorporation of several distinct new mechanisms that im- prove the skill, such as spatial inference, and the ability to use eye direction information as well as head direction. In this paper, we offer an alternative explanation based on a single learning mecha- nism. From a starting state with no knowledge of the implications of another organism’s gaze direction, our model learns to follow gaze by being placed in a simulated environment where an adult caregiver looks around at objects. Our infant model matches the development of gaze following in human infants as measured in key experiments that we replicate and analyze in detail.