Infants follow the gaze of same-age peers, young children, and adults

Abstract

Gaze following – infants’ orienting towards an object attended to by their social partner – has been linked to a range of socio-cognitive skills. Despite considerable research on when infants follow the gaze of their social partners, studies have typically examined infants’ following of adults’ gaze. Therefore, little is known about whether or how gaze following is modulated by the characteristics of the model, such as their age. The current study examined infants’ following of the gaze of an actor that varied in age: an adult, a young child, and an infant. In an eyetracking study, 49 infants (age: 6 to 14 months) were presented with videos in which the actor (either an adult, a child or an infant) first looked down towards a neutral point on the table, then to the participant with a friendly facial expression, and then to one of two novel objects to the left and right of the table. Participants followed the gaze of the actor regardless of age, suggesting that gaze following is not constrained to interactions with an adult. Furthermore, participants showed high interest in the actors’ faces which was the strongest for the infant actor followed by the child actor, and the adult actor. Tthese results shed insight into the interaction between infants’ gaze following behaviour and their attentional preferences for different social partners. We discuss the implications of these findings for theories of development: Beyond adults, other infants and children are also perceived as interesting social partners and, potentially, valuable sources of information