Effects of contingency learning on gaze following and attention direction in infancy

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Stefanie Höhl, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Developmental and Educational Psychology
• Term: from 2009 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 141272188

Infants follow other people´s gaze direction already in the first months after birth. This helps them to direct their attention toward socially relevant stimuli. Our previous research has shown that cues of other persons´ attention such as gaze affect 4-month-olds´ encoding of novel objects. However, it is not known yet whether infants follow other people´s gaze mainly because they are often rewarded for this behavior by an interesting sight or whether neural mechanisms of social attention direction are already functional in early infancy, independently of contingency learning. In the current project we want to investigate the underlying mechanisms of early gaze following using interactive eye tracking. We will test whether 4-month-olds´ gaze following behavior can be increased through contingency learning and whether infants can equally be trained to look in the opposite direction of a gaze cue. We expect that infants´ gaze following, but not the opposite behavior, can be increased through rewards, since gaze following should already be a stable behavior with limited flexibility at this age. In further studies we will test whether infants can learn to follow non-social dynamic stimuli with their gaze. Here, we expect greater flexibility, i.e. infants should be able to learn both following a non-social stimulus with their gaze and the opposite behavior. Since our previous results emphasize the role of (schematic) eyes for infants´ attention direction, we will manipulate whether the dynamic non-social stimulus features schematics eyes or not. Together, the proposed studies will elucidate the role of contingency learning for gaze following in early infancy.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professorin Dr. Sabina Pauen