Detailed contribution information
| Contribution title | Are domain-general processes governing the way infants look at faces? |
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| Contribution code | D3.094 |
| Authors | |
| Form of presentation | Poster |
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| Abstract |
Aims: Individual differences in face-looking behavior have been related to differences in social processing, where an attenuated attention to eyes has been shown to relate to autism diagnosis as well as emerging language ability in infants. However, a recent study by Broda and De Haas (2024) found that among adults looking higher up at faces was associated with looking higher up on non-social objects. This suggests that part of the variation in face-looking may stem from a more general looking mechanism, if these general differences are present in infancy as well then this must be considered when interpreting face-looking indices. Therefore, this study aims to investigate early individual differences in looking behavior by examining the relation between non-social-object looking and face looking in infants. Method: We invited 69 infants to participate (58% females) with an average age of 30 weeks (SD=2.03). Using an eye-tracking procedure, we showed 64 trials (50% faces and 50% objects) in a pseudo-random order. Each trial was initialized by a gaze-contingent attention grabber to the side of the stimuli area. Results and conclusion: We are currently in the middle of data quality control and analysis, results from this will be presented. If we find a domain-general looking preference in infants, it would question the traditional conceptual framework in autism studies of eye-looking being inherently social. Reference: Broda, M. D., & De Haas, B. (2024). Individual differences in human gaze behavior generalize from faces to objects. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(12), e2322149121. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2322149121 |