Toddlers' gaze following through attention modulation: intention is in the eye of the beholder.
We investigated 20-month-olds' (N=56) gaze following by presenting toddlers with a female model that displayed either ostensive or no ostensive cues before shifting her gaze laterally toward an object. The results indicated that toddlers reliably followed the model's gaze redirection after mutual eye contact was established but did so equally reliably after the model's eyes had been made salient nonostensively. Moreover, both conditions elicited gaze following more prominently than when children's attention was initially directed away from the eyes either by specifically accentuating the mouth or by covering the entire face before the model redirected her eyes laterally. These findings suggest that gaze following by toddlers is more likely to be driven by general attention mechanisms than by their appreciation of somebody else's communicative intent through perceiving eye contact.
Department of Special Education, University of Utrecht, 3508 TC Utrecht, The Netherlands. p.f.debordes@uu.nl
Pieter F
PF
de Bordes
Ralf F A
RF
Cox
Fred
F
Hasselman
Antonius H N
AH
Cillessen
D001288:Attention; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D018730:Infant Behavior / Q000523:psychology; D033182:Intention; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D012438:Saccades