Cues for early social skills: direct gaze modulates newborns' recognition of talking faces.
other · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 21525972.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0018610 and PMC identifier 3078105.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Previous studies showed that, from birth, speech and eye gaze are two important cues in guiding early face processing and social cognition. These studies tested the role of each cue independently; however, infants normally perceive speech and eye gaze together. Using a familiarization-test procedure, we first familiarized newborn infants (n = 24) with videos of unfamiliar talking faces with either direct gaze or averted gaze. Newborns were then tested with photographs of the previously seen face and of a new one. The newborns looked longer at the face that previously talked to them, but only in the direct gaze condition. These results highlight the importance of both speech and eye gaze as socio-communicative cues by which infants identify others. They suggest that gaze and infant-directed speech, experienced together, are powerful cues for the development of early social skills.
Medical subject headings
- Cues
- Fixation, Ocular
- Recognition, Psychology
- Social Behavior
- Speech