title: 1- and 2-year-olds' expectations about third-party communicative actions.
abstract: Infants expect people to direct actions toward objects, and they respond to actions directed to themselves, but do they have expectations about actions directed to third parties? In two experiments, we used eye tracking to investigate 1- and 2-year-olds' expectations about communicative actions addressed to a third party. Experiment 1 presented infants with videos where an adult (the Emitter) either uttered a sentence or produced non-speech sounds. The Emitter was either face-to-face with another adult (the Recipient) or the two were back-to-back. The Recipient did not respond to any of the sounds. We found that 2-, but not 1-year-olds looked quicker and longer at the Recipient following speech than non-speech, suggesting that they expected her to respond to speech. These effects were specific to the face-to-face context. Experiment 2 presented 1-year-olds with similar face-to-face exchanges but modified to engage infants and minimize task demands. The infants looked quicker to the Recipient following speech than non-speech, suggesting that they expected a response to speech. The study suggests that by 1 year of age infants expect communicative actions to be directed at a third-party listener.
authors.affiliation: Max-Planck Research Group, Communication Before Language, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Wundtlaan 1, 6525 Nijmegen, Netherlands. Electronic address: gudmundurbjarki@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Gudmundur B
authors.initials: GB
authors.lastname: Thorgrimsson
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Uppsala University, Von Kraemers allé 1, S-751 42 Uppsala, Sweden.
authors.forename: Christine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Fawcett
authors.affiliation: Max-Planck Research Group, Communication Before Language, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Wundtlaan 1, 6525 Nijmegen, Netherlands; Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Hamburg, Von-Melle-Park 5, 20146 Hamburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Ulf
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Liszkowski
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003142:Communication; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D013060:Speech
keywords: Action understanding; Communicative development; Eye tracking; Third-party interactions; Turn-taking