title: The role of early visual attention in social development.
abstract: Faces convey important information about the social environment, and even very young infants are preferentially attentive to face-like over non-face stimuli. Eye-tracking studies have allowed researchers to examine which features of faces infants find most salient across development, and the present study examined scanning of familiar (i.e., mother) and unfamiliar (i.e., stranger) static faces at 6-, 9-, and 12-months-of-age. Infants showed a preference for scanning their mother's face as compared to a stranger's face, and displayed increased attention to the eye region as compared to the mouth region. Infants also showed patterns of decreased attention to eyes and increased attention to mouths between 6 and 12 months. Associations between visual attention at 6, 9, and 12 months and the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales DP (CSBS-DP) at 18 months were also examined, and a significant positive relation between attention to eyes at 6 months and the social subscale of the CSBS-DP at 18 months was found. This effect was driven by infants' attention to their mother's eyes. No relations between face scanning in 9- and 12-month-olds and social outcome at 18 months were found. The potential for using individual differences in early infant face processing to predict later social outcome is discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School; Division of Developmental Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital.
authors.forename: Jennifer B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Wagner
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School; Division of Developmental Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital ; Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Emerson College.
authors.forename: Rhiannon J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Luyster
authors.affiliation: Rosemead School of Psychology, Biola University.
authors.forename: Jung Yeon
authors.initials: JY
authors.lastname: Yim
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Boston University.
authors.forename: Helen
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Tager-Flusberg
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School; Division of Developmental Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital.
authors.forename: Charles A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Nelson
keywords: eye-tracking; face processing; infancy; social development