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| 2. |
- Adam, Maurits, et al.
(författare)
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Goal saliency boosts infants' action prediction for human manual actions, but not for mechanical claws
- 2016
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Ingår i: Infant Behavior and Development. - : Elsevier BV. - 0163-6383 .- 1879-0453. ; 44, s. 29-37
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Previous research indicates that infants' prediction of the goals of observed actions is influenced by own experience with the type of agent performing the action (i.e., human hand vs. non-human agent) as well as by action-relevant features of goal objects (e.g., object size). The present study investigated the combined effects of these factors on 12-month-olds' action prediction. Infants' (N=49) goal-directed gaze shifts were recorded as they observed 14 trials in which either a human hand or a mechanical claw reached for a small goal area (low-saliency goal) or a large goal area (high-saliency goal). Only infants who had observed the human hand reaching for a high-saliency goal fixated the goal object ahead of time, and they rapidly learned to predict the action goal across trials. By contrast, infants in all other conditions did not track the observed action in a predictive manner, and their gaze shifts to the action goal did not change systematically across trials. Thus, high-saliency goals seem to boost infants' predictive gaze shifts during the observation of human manual actions, but not of actions performed by a mechanical device. This supports the assumption that infants' action predictions are based on interactive effects of action-relevant object features (e.g., size) and own action experience.
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| 3. |
- Astor, Kim, et al.
(författare)
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Gaze following emergence relies on both perceptual cues and social awareness
- 2021
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Ingår i: Cognitive development. - : Elsevier. - 0885-2014 .- 1879-226X. ; 60
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Decades of research have emphasized the significance of gaze following in early development. Yet, the developmental origin of this ability has remained poorly understood. We tested the claims made by two prominent theoretical perspectives to answer whether infants gaze following response is based on perceptual (motion of the head) or social cues (gaze direction). We found that 12-month-olds (N = 30) are able to inhibit motion cues and exclusively follow the direction of others' gaze. Six- (N = 29) and 4-month-olds (N = 30) can follow gaze, with a sensitivity to both perceptual and social cues. These results align with the perceptual narrowing hypothesis of gaze following emergence, suggesting that social and perceptual cueing are non-exclusive paths to early developing gaze following.
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| 4. |
- Astor, Kim, et al.
(författare)
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Gaze following in 4.5- and 6-month-old infants : The impact of proximity on standard gaze following performance tests
- 2019
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Ingår i: Infancy. - : Wiley. - 1525-0008 .- 1532-7078. ; 24:1, s. 79-89
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Gaze following (GF), the ability to synchronize visual attention with others, is often considered a foundation of social cognition. In this study, GF was assessed while changing the space between an actor's eyes and the gaze target. This was done to address a potential confound in the gold standard GF performance test, namely the spatial bias of the actors? eye position that occurs when the actor turns the head to look at a target, offsetting the eye position from a centered position toward the attended target. Our results suggest that both 4.5 (n = 27) and 6 (n = 30)-month-old infants can follow an actor's gaze regardless of proximity. This is the first demonstration that early GF is not dependent on proximity cues, and our results strengthen previous findings suggesting that GF develops well before 6 months of age. The study was preregistered, and all data and analysis routines can be downloaded with provided links.
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| 6. |
- Astor, Kim, et al.
(författare)
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Maternal postpartum depression impacts infants' joint attention differentially across cultures
- 2022
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Ingår i: Developmental Psychology. - : American Psychological Association (APA). - 0012-1649 .- 1939-0599. ; 58:12, s. 2230-2238
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We assessed whether the negative association between maternal postpartum depression (PPD) and infants’ development of joint attention (gaze following) generalizes from WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) to Majority World contexts. The study was conducted in Bhutan (N = 105, M = 278 days, 52% males) but also draws from publicly available Swedish data (N = 113, M = 302 days, 49% males). We demonstrate that Bhutanese and Swedish infants’ development follows the same trajectory. However, Bhutanese infants’ gaze following were not related to maternal PPD, which the Swedish infants’ were. The results support the notion that there are protecting factors built into the interdependent family model. Despite all the benefits of being raised in a modern welfare state, it seems like Swedish infants, to an extent, are more vulnerable to maternal mental health than Bhutanese infants.
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| 7. |
- Astor, Kim, et al.
(författare)
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Social and emotional contexts predict the development of gaze following in early infancy
- 2020
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Ingår i: Royal Society Open Science. - : The Royal Society. - 2054-5703. ; 7:9
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The development of gaze following begins in early infancy and its developmental foundation has been under heavy debate. Using a longitudinal design (N = 118), we demonstrate that attachment quality predicts individual differences in the onset of gaze following, at six months of age, and that maternal postpartum depression predicts later gaze following, at 10 months. In addition, we report longitudinal stability in gaze following from 6 to 10 months. A full path model (using attachment, maternal depression and gaze following at six months) accounted for 21% of variance in gaze following at 10 months. These results suggest an experience-dependent development of gaze following, driven by the infant's own motivation to interact and engage with others (the social-first perspective).
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| 8. |
- Astor Währborg, Kim, 1985-
(författare)
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Gaze Following in Infancy : Mechanisms and Developmental Context
- 2024
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Few things are as fundamental to humans as the ability to share attention. It allows us to coordinate our actions with, and assimilate knowledge from, the actions of others with remarkable efficiency and accuracy. This ability emerges in infancy and sets the stage for all subsequent social development. In this thesis, I explore how infants align visual attention with others toward external objects, a skill known as gaze following. The included studies investigate this phenomenon at different levels, ranging from processes within the infant (Study I) to the impact of infants’ immediate emotional context at a micro-scale (Study II) and cultural variation at a macro scale (Study III).Previous work has suggested different mechanistic explanations for emerging gaze following, ranging from perceptual cueing to reinforcement learning, to social motivation. Study I aimed to conduct a critical test comparing the perceptual cueing perspective with the social-first perspective. The results indicate that infants initially use both cues, but rely more on social information towards the end of the first year. The theories of gaze following emergence can be framed in a broader discussion regarding the developmental base (experience-dependent or experience-expectant). It has been suggested that infants’ environment influences the early development of gaze following. However, some theoretical perspectives hold an experience-expectant perspective that infants are predisposed to align visual attention with others, suggesting that gaze following should be relatively robust early in life. In Study II, we found that infants’ gaze following was impacted by attachment quality and maternal Postpartum depression (PPD) at 6 and 10 months, respectively, aligning with an experience-dependent view of development. Study III extends this work to test the universality of Study II and gaze following as a valid measure of attention sharing. We found that across different cultural contexts (Bhutanese and Swedish), infants follow gaze to a similar degree. However, the impact of infants’ social and emotional environment observed in Study II was not found in Bhutan. We discuss the possibility that cultures relying more on interdependent values possess inherent protective factors that mitigate the negative effects of PPD on the infant.
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| 9. |
- Augusti, Else-Marie, et al.
(författare)
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Look who's talking : Pre-verbal infants' perception of face-to-face and back-to-back social interactions
- 2010
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Psychology. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 1664-1078. ; :1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Four-, 6-, and 11-month old infants were presented with movies in which two adult actors conversed about everyday events, either by facing each other or looking in opposite directions. Infants from 6 months of age made more gaze shifts between the actors, in accordance with the flow of conversation, when the actors were facing each other. A second experiment demonstrated that gaze following alone did not cause this difference. Instead the results are consistent with a social cognitive interpretation, suggesting that infants perceive the difference between face-to-face and back-to-back conversations and that they prefer to attend to a typical pattern of social interaction from 6 months of age.
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