title: Gaze following is accelerated in healthy preterm infants.
abstract: Gaze following is an essential human communication cue that orients the attention of two interacting people to the same external object. This capability is robustly observed after 7 months of age in full-term infants. Do healthy preterm infants benefit from their early exposure to face-to-face interactions with other humans to acquire this capacity sooner than full-term infants of the same chronological age, despite their immature brains? In two different experiments, we demonstrated that 7-month-old preterm infants performed like 7-month-old full-term infants (with whom they shared the same chronological age) and not like 4-month-old full-term infants (with whom they shared the same postmenstrual age). The duration of exposure to visual experience thus appears to have a greater impact on the development of early gaze following than does postmenstrual age.
authors.affiliation: Laboratorio de Neurociencias Cognitivas, Escuela de Psicología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile mpenag@uc.cl marcella.pena.g@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Marcela
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Peña
authors.affiliation: Laboratorio de Neurociencias Cognitivas, Escuela de Psicología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
authors.forename: Diana
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Arias
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, INSERM U992, Gif-sur-Yvette, France NeuroSpin Center, DSV/I2BM, Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique, Gif-sur-Yvette, France Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, Université Paris-Sud.
authors.forename: Ghislaine
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Dehaene-Lambertz
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002657:Child Development; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular; D005865:Gestational Age; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007234:Infant, Premature; D008297:Male; D012938:Social Perception; D066107:Social Skills
keywords: emotion; experience; facial expression; gaze following; premature; social ability