PD Dr Stefanie Hoehl | When it pays off to take a look – How contingency learning can shape infants’ direction of visual attention

From early on in development infants follow others’ gaze direction. It has been a matter of debate whether infants learn to follow gaze because they are usually rewarded for this behavior by an interesting sight in the environment or whether evolved attention biases underlie early gaze following. In a series of studies we used interactive eye tracking to test whether contingency learning affects young infants’ direction of visual attention. Four-month-olds spontaneously followed another person’s gaze. Their gaze following was increased when rewarded by gaze-contingent animations. In contrast, rewarding infants’ looking in the opposite direction of a person’s gaze had no influence on their behavior. It was also possible to train infants to follow the movement direction of a “block”, but only when it featured schematic eyes. Together, results suggest that by 4 months infants display robust gaze following behavior that can be increased but not reduced through reward learning. Learning to follow an artificial agent’s gaze depends on the presence of schematic eyes. I will discuss novel possibilities provided by interactive eye tracking technology and also offer an overview on the Early Social Cognition Group’s main lines of research.

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